


You've Got a Hold on Me

by mibi_chan



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-07
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-14 05:04:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 38,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/833066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mibi_chan/pseuds/mibi_chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A displaced Prince and a haughty genius are hardly the most likable pair: Bulma and Vegeta don't expect much from each other. Then again, who would blame them? A 3-year yarn that explores what happens when the line between disdain and respect blurs into irrepressible desire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue - Won't Quit

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Woaaaah, this is new for me. I'm excited to begin a '3-Year' fic, but with trepidation.   
> In truth, I'd like to think that this fic is a character study on these two lovers. After nearly fifteen years of analyzing this whole event in my mind, it's still a mystery to me – and so many others. What follows is my interpretation after many discussions with other talented B/V authors, and note-taking that really pushes the boundaries of fandom. ^_~
> 
> Great big thanks to the 'We're Just Saiyan…' community for their continued support and camaraderie! Go check it out!
> 
> Enjoy…

**You’ve Got a Hold on Me**

**Prologue – Won’t Quit**

 

                If only he weren’t so god-damned _dedicated._   Something about his particular breed of single-minded devotion had always sparked an interest in a woman like Bulma Briefs.  But if he lacked that one crucial element, that concentrated obsession, maybe he’d be easier to ignore.

                Instead, the Saiyan Prince was possessed:  utterly consumed by the demons that leapt around in his head like spritely leprechauns, chasing a fading rainbow.  In fact, Vegeta probably didn’t realize it, the enormity and grandeur of this fixation he had on Goku more closely resembled unrequited love than it did a warrior’s desperate quest.  As Bulma gazed at the Gravity Simulator, perched quietly on the east lawn of Capsule Corporation’s compound and for all intents and purposes silent as a mouse, she snorted in derision. 

                Why the hell was she standing here anyway, watching over the displaced Saiyan as though he wanted (or _needed_ ) the attention?  Part of her wanted to stomp over to the east lawn, press her palm flat on the security panel of the GSR and enter the manual shutdown command.  That same part of her would password protect the damn thing so he would have no access.  Vegeta would leave, she thought.  He would leave and train somewhere else, somewhere on this planet other than _her_ lawn, with _her_ inventions and _her_ genius!  Or, he would incinerate the Capsule Corp compound and then leave.  Either way he’d be gone, right?  That was the intended goal.  It wasthat _other_ part of her that…  That--?

                “Bulma, sweetie!  I know you can’t get that man’s tight, won’t-quit-ass out of your head, but why don’t you come over here and help me with these tea sandwiches?  I made so many!”

                Yes.  It was _that_ part of Bulma that her mother now gave irritating voice to, that wouldn’t let go.  She’d told herself a million times that it was nothing more than morbid curiosity.  Wasn’t everyone like that, she reasoned?  It was what made you want to look at a car wreck, when you really should look away.  It was that strange place deep inside the soul that made you want to research a serial killer to discover his secret obsession, or scour news programs for a suicide bomber’s radical motivation.  This was her fascination with Vegeta, Bulma reasoned.  And good _Kami_ was he ever a car wreck:  a multi-vehicle, multiple death, multiple factor car wreck.  A car wreck of only luxury, posh vehicles.  And he did have a tight ass…

                Bulma clicked her tongue at herself and shut both eyes to the sunlight outside the balcony window.  The outline of the GSR imprinted against the backs of her retinas and made her own obsession all the more real.  She hissed in a breath and turned back to the sun room, where her mother sat and sipped on a dainty china cup of Jasmine tea.  Bulma could smell the lovely bouquet from here.

                Stiffly, she plopped her bottom down on the crisp white linen of a lounge chair and leaned forward to pick up the still steaming cup of tea her mother had so thoughtfully poured for her.  She took a long, glorious sip of her favorite tea and let a satisfied “mmm” escape her throat before swallowing.  Bulma leaned back against the lounge seat and sighed, her eyes drifting shut.

                Lovely, caressing silence enveloped the room, slightly accented by the quiet clink of Mrs. Briefs’ teaspoon against the rim of her cup, and for a moment Bulma was at peace.  To hell with Vegeta’s dedication.  The only person it mattered to was him, and really it was the only thing to which he gave a single, invested thought.

                Bulma felt herself slip away into a light doze as she tried desperately to rid her mind of the thought of him.  She was quite sure he didn’t think of her all that often, and even if he did it was only to the extent that he needed something from her:  to fix the ki bots or mend the dents in the floor of the GSR, or even to manually override the default warning codes when he drove the machine to its limits.  He never said please or thank you, barely addressed her at all really.  And every time she got near him, she could almost _feel_ the hackles on the back of his thick, powerful neck rise up and prickle his skin; it was as though he could barely stand to be in the same room with someone so _beneath_ him.

Great Kami, it wasn’t worth her time to obsess over such an unmitigated _asshole!_ As if she needed acknowledgement from an allegedly reformed psychopath!  Bulma’s brow creased, even as the doze came on stronger and forced her breathing to calm.  Her mother was humming now, as she usually did when she had nothing else to say but couldn’t stand the silence.

That was when the floor began to shake… And groan…


	2. Chapter One - So F*cking What?

**So fucking what?**

 

                The ‘Incident’, as everyone present had begun to refer to it, hadn’t been so much an explosion as it was a thundering, pulsing echo of displaced energy followed by a soul-wrenching, sonic boom of infuriated, obsessive madness.  It had only been seconds before the roof of the GSR blast out, but everyone had heard the deafening roar—and they all knew who it belonged to.  But as Bulma watched him, the perpetrator of all that insanity sleeping fitfully in the guest bed across the room, she felt a very sudden, shattering sense of pity.

                His body, bandaged to the gills and compact as it was, looked so broken there that she was hard-pressed to see the madman who’d come to Earth just less than two years ago with fire blazing in his obsidian glare.  His form commanded respect though, even from this angle, and Bulma wondered at the scars that dashed mercilessly across his powerful chest.  Her brow furrowed as she observed the Saiyan Prince in the dim light of the guest room.  A tall shadow cast into the room from behind her, and she felt Yamcha’s hard stare at the back of her head before she even turned to see it.

                “I know what you’re thinking.”  His voice was a low growl behind her.  Without facing him, Bulma took a deep breath and leaned against the door frame.

                “Do you?”  She asked.  The words dripped with warning.  “Do you still know that, Yamcha?” 

                “You’re thinking that he doesn’t look all that evil, lying there like that.”

The warrior behind her was tense with caution, and yes, a rush of jealousy.  She didn’t need to be a genius to sense it.  They hadn’t _really_ been a couple since his resurrection, but…  Well, he still needed her, didn’t he?  It was she who had moved on a little too quickly, a little too graciously.  Bulma turned and gazed up at the man she would have married. 

Yamcha watched her with concern, and just a smidge of desire, she thought.  His once unruly mane of thick, black waves had been tamed into a straight-laced cut that just brushed the hard line of his jaw.  The scars on his handsome face, though still a mute testimony to his past, had faded to a dull pink over the years.  It was the only thing left of him that still blazed against the beaten path.  Everything else, well…  He was so like his hair cut:  tame and soft.  Bulma drew a breath, because it looked as though Yamcha wanted to speak.

“He almost died, Yamcha.”

“It was his own fault, and he almost killed all of us in the process!”

“That wasn’t his intention--!”

“But he wouldn’t have blinked twice if he took us out with him, Bulma!  You think he’s so pitiable, that you could almost forgive him.”

Bulma took another deep breath and felt her nostrils flare.  Something about Yamcha’s mini-tirade masked his true intentions in visiting her wing of the compound tonight.  Sure, he would say it was to make sure she didn’t overdo it tonight in her lab, repairing what was left of the GSR and beginning her plans to reconstruct it.  He would probably even tell her that he’d wanted to see how things were going with Vegeta; if the arrogant, hateful son of a bitch was being a suitable patient.

“What did you really come here to tell me?”  Bulma asked, finally devoid of patience.

Her one-time love inhaled deeply through his nose, and the muscles in his neck twitched with irritation.  The silence between them was punctuated only by the soft song of crickets outside the guest room window, and the soft whir of Vegeta’s oxygen tank.

“I’m telling you that I can see what’s going on here.”  Yamcha’s words were as close to a whisper as they could be.  “You always think you can diffuse any situation with your looks, your smarts.  Just this once, Bulma, admit you can’t charm your way out of this one.  He’s a dick, and he doesn’t care about you, about your family, or us.  You can’t _flirt_ with a potentially homicidal, maniac alien--!”

“Fuck off, Yamcha.”  She cut him off with a deadly growl, put both fists on her hips and turned from his accusatory glare.

Bulma hadn’t wanted it to end that way, really she hadn’t.  Despite their current differences of opinion, Yamcha was a friend and one that she didn’t want to lose.  It was difficult to remember that now, though, as he began to follow her down the hallway.

“You can’t shrug this off, Bulma--!”  He snarled at her.  She stopped abruptly, craned her neck to glower at him and tried not to remember that he had loved her once…  Desperately.  Her wide blue eyes narrowed.

“I said, ‘ _fuck off_ , Yamcha’.”  She replied through clenched teeth.

And that was that, she thought grudgingly as her feet carried her the rest of the way down the hallway into the east residential wing.  This time, he did not follow her.  Bulma wondered if Yamcha was still outside the doorway of Vegeta’s room, contemplating subterfuge and assassination.  He’d never do it, she mused, but the thought was probably racing through the part of his mind that still remembered his days as a desert bandit.

Bulma arrived at her own rooms none too soon, and when she shut the door quietly behind her she sighed and leaned against it.  The whole, mad day had been exhausting and defending herself against Yamcha’s inane accusations had made supernovae of her nerve endings.  She reached up and plunged all five fingers into the mess of puffy curls on her head, sliding the headband off so that it dropped to the ground, forgotten.

Even in the comfort of her own bedroom, and later in the hot, steamy rush of water inside the shower, Bulma could not shake the image of Vegeta’s prostrate form.  Because even on Namek, when he’d shown up to kife Krillin’s dragonball in battered, broken armor and fresh from a regen tank, his stance had been intimidating.  It was what had made her cower shamefully against the wall of rock behind her.  Something in his body, whether it was sheer power or simply veiled overconfidence, demanded obedience.

Well, he _was_ a prince, she thought as the hot water streamed down her naked back and soothed the tired muscles there.  And it seemed that whether he was the prince of a virtually dead race of warriors, or of a massive following that bowed to his every whim seemed immaterial to Vegeta.  His arrogance wasn’t just infuriating, it was admirable.  Bulma sighed, droplets of water spraying from her refreshed lips, and finished washing her hair.

Yamcha’s allegation that she had some kind of fixation on Vegeta echoed in the recesses of her exhausted brain.  Her teeth clenched together at the complete audacity he’d displayed in the hallway.  The idea was ridiculous, and yet…  Yet, the Saiyan Prince’s entire fate – his very existence in her life – seemed to resonate in her soul with urgency, and resolution.  Unwittingly, Bulma’s lips quirked into an upturned sneer.  If she couldn’t stop thinking about the bastard, maybe she shouldn’t.  She wondered if Yamcha knew that his declaration had sparked something of a challenge in her gut.  And Bulma Briefs _loved_ a challenge.

Maybe she _could_ flirt with a potentially homicidal, maniac alien.  Wouldn’t that shock her friends out of their goddamn training boots?

 

#

 

The dream was always the same.  Sometimes, it began with a soft whisper:  a tendril of horror that slid insidiously into the crevices of his mind and corrupted every thought that came after.  Then sometimes it began with a thunderous boom that exploded all peaceful darkness and left him a cowering mess in a nameless corner, shrinking from the torture as he had always wanted to do but had not allowed himself the luxury.  But regardless of its beginnings the dream was invariably, _excruciatingly_ , the same.

As Vegeta lay at the edge of consciousness, remembering the explosion that had left him a bruised, bleeding heap among piles of debris, this time was no different.  Tonight, the tendrils of gentle memory flooded his senses and brought back every agonizing vision since childhood that had ever once plagued him.  The first visitor was always the one who had given him the nightmares in the first place.  It was always _that one._  

Even in death, Frieza haunted the abandoned castles of Saiyan pride:  Vegeta’s last bastion of self-worth.  He stood at the other corner of that nameless room, cackling with maniacal glee at the broken Monkey Prince who puffed out his chest in mock courage at his lizard overlord.  That courage had never been rewarded with praise or encouragement.  No.  Vegeta was always paid, in kind, for his unfailing audacity with a vicious snarl and a scornful, torturous beating.  And it was the beatings that visited him most frequently in sleep, when he was most vulnerable.

This time, though, someone else visited him.  If having nearly killed himself in the pursuit of surpassing said visitor was not enough, Vegeta couldn’t help but allow himself a subconscious ‘huff’ of disdain for the vision of Kakarot – shining like a golden fucking god as he attained something Vegeta was _born_ for but had never found.

He struggled in vain as the image of that bumbling, shit excuse for a Saiyan came closer.  But who was that by his side?  The young stranger who had come to visit, claiming Saiyan heritage with a transformation that came so easily it made Vegeta ill at the sight.  _Bastard!_  

If _only_ he could move properly, he could get up from his corner and incinerate the both of them – prove once and for all that he was their PRINCE.  The one who, above any of them, deserved the prize of Frieza’s death cry at his hands.  But something kept him there, held him crouched in that corner like a cowardly, low-born brat.  Gods above, if he could only move!

Vegeta dug both hands at the ground beneath him, and his fingers met nothing but cold resistance:  a sticky, melting resistance that felt a lot like the spilled guts of Zarbon as he’d blasted a hole eight inches wide into him.  The beast of Oozaru howled inside him, but the nameless room was cavernous and the sound echoed out into oblivion.  And then the tears came, just like the ones he’d shed on Namek, just before that ignominious cheap shot had pierced his heart and sent him tumbling into the dark tunnels of hell.

He could see Kakarot and that little bastard moving closer now.  They laughed…  They laughed at him, at their prince!  Vegeta wept, and he roared, but the power inside him would not crest.  The Super Saiyan that slept in his soul stayed quiet – still.

When his eyes snapped open, the room he lay in was dim but for the distant call of sunlight outside in the east.  He stared at the ceiling for a moment and remembered where he was, where he had been for a few weeks now.  Yes, the gravity simulator.  The explosion of his poorly aimed and misfired ki blast that had nearly destroyed everything in a quarter mile radius…

The room was quiet, and Vegeta realized dimly that he had knocked off a mask from the front of his face.  Air streamed out of it and hissed gently at his ear.  Every last gods damned part of his body ached.  The whole of it moaned in protest; he had probably been struggling in his unconscious fever.  Though it hurt very much to do so, he pressed both lips together and inched his neck from side to side so he could gain back the ability to use it.

A sudden, yet gentle, shuffling bounced off of the walls in the room and sparked his awareness.  Vegeta’s eyes flew open, and his neck snapped painfully to the side of his bed opposite the wall.  In the weak, burgeoning light of dawn he could see her.  It was that blue-haired female, Bulma:  the earth woman who had brought him here, whose father had allowed his continued use of the space capsule that housed the GSR.  The one who had known Kakarot since childhood.  What in the _hell_ was she doing here?

She was lost to the oblivion of sleep, snoring delicately with her head rested on the desk next to his bed.  Her face was a vision of peace.  The utter assurance of safety that graced her brow was astounding to him; it wove around her softly rounded face like the threads of a fleece he would never touch.  What would it be like, he wondered, to sleep with such abandon?  Such utter disregard for your surroundings?

Surely, he would never know.  And this, _female_ could certainly never teach him.  She’d already tried, vehemently if he remembered correctly.  Is that why she was here now, he thought?  Was it genuine concern that had led her to this room, to lay at his side whilst he recovered and wait for him to see that she worried for his well-being…?  No one had ever really given a shit before, he reasoned.  Why should anyone give a shit now?  He grunted, and a spike of pain shot through his core like a lance of ki flame.  Vegeta grimaced and looked away from the fine, dim silhouette of Bulma Briefs.  The only other sound in the room now was the mingled rhythm of his breathing, and hers.  So what if she did care.  So what if her sea-blue eyes sparkled like the rarest gems in seven galaxies every time she shrieked at him.  _So fucking what._

Vegeta blinked in the brightening light of dawn, and his eyes narrowed.  _So what._


	3. Chapter Two - Oozing

**Oozing**

It wasn’t just the solace of the gravity simulator that appealed to him.  Since its reconstruction a week ago, something else made him long for its suffocating and galling interior.  Inside the GSR, nothing mattered except the weighty, overpowering air.  Nothing distracted him from the bursting lust of battle that his Saiyan blood yearned for:  that it sang for.  Inside this room he could pretend.  He could pretend he was still on Vegeta-sei, a home he had never really known but had ached for since he was old enough to think of his father’s face in a more vivid and proper light. 

He’d last seen that intelligent, scheming bastard at five years of age.  Even as he shut his eyes against the red, red air inside the GSR and steeled his body against the impossible force, he could see his father’s face.  It was proud, and stern, and… and?

Right now though… Right now something inched up his side under the swath of bandages that still clung to the middle of his chest.  Gods help him, he could not remember but, it might be pain.  It had been about five hours since that blue-haired, vulgar Earth Woman Bulma had re-wrapped his ribs.  She’d used a device called a “bioStitch” that sounded a lot like what an Arlian pulse blaster did when he was being fired at right before the purge of that useless heap.

                Vegeta finished his last of countless pushups – he’d stopped keeping count half an hour ago – and _pushed_ until both legs were stock still in the immense air above him.  He levitated slowly; the weight of the air made all that thick blood pool in his head and shoulders like a vat of molten metal.  The gash on the upper right side of his skull ached in protest, but he grit his teeth together in a silent, defiant snarl and squeezed both eyes shut.  The oppressive air around him was blissfully, amazingly, stabilizing.    Vegeta breathed out slowly and began to count the beats of his heart.  He remembered suddenly, it was the first sound he’d heard after being resurrected on Namek, in that dark, dark grave Kakarot had buried him in.  The presumptuous, low-class _shit head_. 

                A bluish glow appeared behind his eyelids, and Vegeta squinted into the source.  The holo screen had popped up, and that stunning little bitch of a genius appeared; her arms were crossed over her chest and a flash of unadulterated rage zipped through her big blue eyes.  It had to be some kind of galactic law violation, to look the way she did; all breasts and legs and the cocky assurance of a Katchoni Royal Courtesan.  Hah, exterminated three years ago by Frieza, if he remembered correctly, and with regret.

                “I’m sure I don’t have to remind you of this--!”  She said, calmly but dripping with ire.  “But seven of your ribs are broken, you cracked the bone of your left cheek, there’s a gash seven inches long on your head, a small hernia in your small bowel and, wait, wait this is the best part!  Your ACL ligament is torn.  Didn’t know you could sustain such a mundane injury!”  Her voice was slowly gaining momentum into a bitchy, amused condescension.

                Vegeta shut his eyes again, willing the creature in front of him to disappear as quickly as she had appeared.  Her arched eyebrows, viper-like tongue and glistening lips were really, _really,_ starting to pervade his sense of stillness and concentration.

                “Go away,” he replied, as calmly as was possible for someone being so viciously impeded.

                “Are you completely out of your mind--?!”  She screeched.  “How can you hope to train properly with a quarter of a functioning body?”

                Vegeta felt his teeth clench.  That was it: every muscle in his body was on edge now, wrapped around a coil of exasperation.  His concentration was fucked now, and it was all… _her_ … fault.  He opened his eyes into narrow slits and gazed at the holo screen again.  His brow creased with an incandescent rage so closely woven around his gut, like longing, that it made him growl.  Bulma snarled back, and his blood pressure jumped insidiously.

                “I suggest you shut the hell up now, Earth Bitch.  I’m tasking myself with the most important training of my life, and your interference is _infuriating_.”

                The look on that woman’s face…  Gorgeous!  Vegeta nearly smirked aloud in triumph at the glowing evidence of his glory.   But suddenly, the way her eyes bulged out of her skull, the slack-jawed, complete and utter bewilderment that someone had dared to speak to her in such away faded as quickly as it had come.  And then…  Then she fucking _smiled._   Not just any smile, but one of deriding, unadulterated self-satisfaction.

At that moment, as he hovered effortlessly about three feet from the holo screen, a quick _slip_ of his left arm tweaked out the rigid stasis he’d held in mid-air.  He sucked in a breath, eyes wide, and held in a breath as his body, weighing four hundred times what it should weigh here, slammed into the floor of the GSR with a _slap_.  He felt a few of those seven broken ribs she’d mentioned crunch and grind against one another.  He groaned and rolled laboriously to his side.

“Oh hoooo!”  Bulma Briefs laughed.

That voice…  It crowed above him with uncontained glee.  Vegeta ground his teeth together and pushed up on all fours.  He glared at her; he glared at her with all the menace he could muster.  And somewhere on the heels of that menace he could sense it – it was the lilt of her voice, the curve of her lips that resembled the striated rock of Planet Vegeta’s Eastern Low Lands that did it. 

“Look at that!”  She was cooing now.  “Can’t say I’m wrong now, can you?”

Vegeta felt one of his ribs poke against his lung.  Not hard enough to puncture it, mind you, but enough to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end (as much as they were able in this environment), and enough to make him want to wrap his fingers around that alluring harpy’s neck.  He pressed his lips together once and shook his head to rid it of the shine on her lips.

“Do you want to die?”  He asked, softly so as not to breathe too heavily and disrupt his rib further.  Her eyes widened again, and that lovely look of haughtiness returned.  She huffed aloud.

“What exactly was that, Vegeta?  I’m not sure I heard you.”

“I SAID DO YOU WANT TO FUCKING DIE, WOMAN!?  Do you _want_ to be torn apart by androids with a power greater than your precious ‘Son-kun’?”  His rage exploded, and the rib poking at his lung scratched violently against that tender organ.

Vegeta gasped loudly and clenched a fist against the floor of the GSR.  He punched it until it caved a bit under the meaty flesh.  When he looked at the holo screen again, she was staring at him doe-eyed, but something else glinted there.  It was the same self-satisfied, gleeful look she’d given him before.

“No, Vegeta.  I don’t want to die.”  She said, and the screech was gone from her voice.  It enveloped him in a cluster of something unfamiliar.  Or at least… something not felt for so long that it _seemed_ unfamiliar.  Bulma clutched her dainty fingers in front of her and grinned.

“I’ve got a long, full life ahead of me, Your Highness.  I’m young, smart and by Kami, am I beautiful.  So don’t you dare try to threaten me!  In the state you’re in now, I’d make your life a living hell.”

In the state he was in now… _In the state he was in now--?!_   He slammed his fist down again and pushed himself up so that he was eye-level with the holo screen. 

“Holy War Gods, woman.  Do you have any idea what I could do to you, ‘in the state I’m in now’?”

That shut her cherry-pout mouth.  Vegeta saw that his meaning carried a heavy weight in her mind, and her oceanic eyes glittered.  She lifted one finger and shook it at him.

“Aw, Vegeta.  We both know you won’t do that.”

“Do we?”  He growled.  She gazed at him with that ridiculously endearing smirk until he shook and gripped the side of his torso where his rib edged away from its proper place.  Vegeta grunted in a vain attempt at concealing the pain.

“When you feel like getting stitched up again, come see me.  Otherwise, you can thank yourself for breaking down to a useless heap.”

The holo screen flickered and disappeared, and Vegeta pressed all five fingers into the skin of his side.  Absently, he remembered the day Bulma had followed the lot of them to the barren mountains outside West City where Frieza’s ship landed; her ridiculously bouncy hair (her ridiculously perky tits) and that idiotic determination at wanting to “see the action”.  By the gods, that woman and her stubborn, courageous idiocy might kill him before his body did.

 

#

 

“Bulma, honey, why don’t you go lay by the pool for a while?  It’s near the East Lawn and that hunky friend of Son-kun is sure to notice you in your new swimsuit!  It might make you feel better.”

If Bunny Briefs was anything, and she _was_ indeed – something – she was candid.  Bulma could never be sure if this frankness was a result of her apparent stupor as she went about her daily business, or if it was a genuine desire for harmony and copacetic existence that made her speak her mind.  To a fault.  _Really, ‘friend’ of Son-kun?  _ Bulma sat, staring at a plateful of pancakes and fruit left untouched.  Her hands were busy holding up her chin, which was set firm in a sort of petulant, toothless grimace.

Three weeks had passed since the “Incident” with the GSR, and exactly two weeks had gone by since she’d discovered Vegeta, perched on a single finger under four hundred times Earth’s normal gravity pull, engaged in a mind-crunching, utterly ludicrous training session.  To her chagrin, he had not come to her, asking for another session with her (naturally ingenious) bioStitch device.  She’d concocted the idea several weeks ago, even before the GSR exploded, assuming that as the Z Warriors began their rigorous sessions in preparation for the Androids someone would _eventually_ need help a little more quickly than a side-trip to Karin’s tower.  But not Vegeta, no…  The surly Saiyan Prince had probably healed on his own by now, and Bulma was loathe to even bother asking.

Bulma was also loathe to remember that Yamcha’s warnings (or rather his reproach of her attention to Vegeta) were genuine at the heart.  But her alienated, reformed ex-boyfriend had left after Vegeta’s accident without much of an excuse, short of his perfunctory explanation that he needed to beef himself up for the Android invasion.  What a poor excuse for a bandit…  Maybe Yamcha had been right though, much as she hated to concede to it.

Thus far her plan to flirt successfully with the alien had been a bust; Kami, she hadn’t even spoken to the grizzly warrior for two weeks.  Something in Vegeta’s body, his soul, kept her out: something old and frightening and possibly evil, though she still could not quite believe that last bit.  Even in the most frightening moments on Namek, when he’d threatened to kill her, and Krillin, in his manic quest for immortality, she had not seen evil.  She’d seen that blasted, inexorable determination and known its value.  But there was something old in his soul… old and dirty.

Bulma took a deep, sudden breath and picked up her fork.  Her mother glanced in her direction and smiled warmly with a gentle shake of her blonde head.  She giggled inanely, adorably, and went about her task in mixing more batter.  Dr. Briefs had been up for hours, so Bulma could only assume that her mother was, as usual, engaging in the futile task of creating a lovely breakfast spread for her house guest.  As Bulma pushed a forkful of blueberries and thick, warm pancakes into her mouth, she huffed quietly.  Something about Vegeta told her that a breakfast spread was not something he regularly engaged in on his numerous galactic purge missions.

The pancakes were good, and Bulma shut her eyes to the velvety feel of them as they melted into her mouth, and the blueberries sat sweet/tart on the tip of her tongue.  Outside the kitchen bay window, a few birds were reminding her that life was a very simple and beautiful thing, even when dark and menacing things were looming on the horizon.

As if on cue, a disruptive _bang_ outside the kitchen doors brought Bulma out of her reverie.  Bunny yipped like a wounded animal and turned to the doors with the bowl of batter still poised in her hands.  A dribble of batter inched its way down the side of the bowl.  Across the room, the door command panel was shorting out, and a tiny sliver of smoke slithered up into the air.

Bulma squinted, left her chair and rounded the large island counter in the center of the kitchen until she reached the door.  She gazed at the panel for a moment, and then at the doors.  The red error lights were flashing unobtrusively at the top of the door frame.

_Panel malfunction._   The virtual female voice droned.  _Doors reverting to manual operation._

“Oh, balls.”  Bulma said aloud, above the scoff from her mother.  The sliding doors that made up eighty-five percent of Capsule Corp’s compound were an utter _bitch_ to open manually, being that they were heavy and quite tightly riveted into their tracks.  Bulma sighed and glanced over at her mother.  Nothing but batter there…  She sighed and turned back to her predicament.

“What the hell?”  She muttered, reaching out to stuff eight fingers into the center of the panels.  With a grunt, she pried them open a few inches, until another set of fingers much larger and thicker than hers forced their way in.  She gasped loudly, and the fingers pushed the door panels open fully with little effort.

Vegeta knelt, crumpled with his head leaning against the wall, in front of the command panel.  His fist was lodged in it, and the wires were sparking around the ruddy skin of his hand like a ki ball.  He was gripping his side and breathing with deep, raspy gulps of air.

“Oh, Vegeta!”  Bulma’s mother chirped from inside the kitchen, her batter still unattended to.

Bulma knelt on one knee in front of him, her brows knitted together in a mixture of concern and irritation.

“Well, fuck a duck!”  She snapped.  “You’ve finally beaten yourself so senseless that you’d come asking for help, hmm?  Do you have any idea how long it’s going to take me to repair this command panel--?”

“Rib…”  He gasped, interrupting her.  Bulma tucked both feet under her and, at the sound of his voice, reached out.  For a brief moment, so small that had she not been watching his face she may have missed it, Vegeta regarded her intrusive attempt at contact with a contempt so wary – so petrified – that his pain-shadowed left eye locked onto her with absolute clarity.  The snarl on the corner of his mouth was so reminiscent of the one she had seen in Baba’s Crystal Ball during his invasion of Earth that she nearly balked.

But Bulma continued to reach out.  His eye twitched, and she curled her fingers into little ribbons of assurance.  There was blood seeping out from between the fingers he held clenched at his side.  One of his broken ribs had probably compounded, and by the look of him, he’d likely been ignoring it for days.  She inched forward, and he did not move: not further away, not closer.

“Vegeta…” She ventured a word or two.  “Vegeta, just…  Dammit, just let someone _help_ you.”

With no other course of action, she stretched her fingers out further and covered his bloody hand with her own.  A few more trickles of blood leaked out from his hand to her fingers.  She glanced down at the covered wound, and then back to Vegeta’s face.  He was still watching her with the same contempt but, remarkably, a shade of it had dissipated.  He did not speak.

The Saiyan lifted a foot until he had pushed himself up to a hunched standing position, and leaned heavily on the door frame near the busted command panel.  Bulma ventured a hand around the small of his waist, and tried in all good faith, to ignore the heat against her fingers and the sudden rush of excitement that fluttered through her.  Even when he’d nearly blown himself to bits; even when she’d used the bioStitch on his ribs, she had never touched his bare and searing skin in such a way.

Vegeta’s breath hitched in his throat, and when she again examined his expression, she could not tell if it was his pain or merely the contact.  How long had it been since _anyone_ had touched him in such a way, without malicious or violent intent?  Bulma looked away and back into the kitchen, where her mother stood still, her bowl of pancake batter finally abandoned on the granite counter.  Her hands were poised in front of her lips.

“Mama!  Don’t just stand there, call Daddy!  I’ll need some MediBots to help me get him to the infirmary!”  Bulma called to her.  Bunny Briefs nodded and turned to press the intercom near the kitchen sink, but not before casting an uncharacteristically introspective glance at the two figures in the hall.  One a pretty little genius with an empire at her fingertips, and the other a forgotten prince with his poor precious pride oozing like tar onto the floor of the hallway.

 

#

 

Bulma pressed her lips together and watched Vegeta’s face as she pressed the bioStitch against the closed wound on his side.  He was still glaring at her, the bastard, and all the heated uncertainty in his black, black eyes made her tremble.  She wondered if he could feel it.  But then, he was a goddamn _Saiyan_ ; he could probably feel her pores sweating if he concentrated hard enough.

Resetting the bone had been a short task for the MediBots, but despite Vegeta’s stoic expression she had seen that it had caused him a great deal of pain.  His expression was a mystery, Bulma mused.  He gazed at her with a kind of wary half-respect: an unsure venture that perhaps she had been right about his injuries.  She looked away and read the display of the bioStitch.

“You’re welcome.”  She ventured the phrase with such trepidation that it almost felt like rage.

Kami… His gaze was still penetrating the back of her head from above like a hot poker.  She felt a red heat wash unbidden through her body.  His skin, still so close to her touch and yet so far out of reach, seemed to radiate that fire.  She had not touched it since the hallway…

God damn him.  Vegeta’s defiance – his dedication, again yes, yes! – it was something so maddening that it was admirable!

“I am unfamiliar with such trifling Chikyuu-jin phrases,” his voice came slowly through her haze of thought.  “I came here because my body would not heal on its own and it needed attention.  I’m supposed to ‘thank’ you for that?  Feh--!”  He spat the words like poison from his tensed lips.  “Ironic; you purport such selflessness and dignity yet I should disgrace myself to grovel for you.”

Bulma’s fingers squeezed her little device so tightly that it began to shake.  When she looked up, Vegeta’s glare had turned so derisive that he was smirking again.  The bioStitch dropped, forgotten, and it banged loudly on the exam bed Vegeta sat on.  Before she could lean into him, into the heat of this alien man who made jelly of her bones and stoked her ire, she breathed a deep and laborious breath.  He continued to watch her with growing amusement, the _dickhead!_

She leaned forward and pressed both palms flat on the bed, one on either side of his wide-spread legs.  Bulma’s heart pounded in her throat, and she wondered if he could see the pulse fluttering wildly under her chin.  Maybe…

“Are you angry now, Earth Woman _Bulma?_ ”  He asked, and his breath brushed against her parted lips.  The fear intensified, but Bulma shuddered reluctantly, and her fingertips suddenly ached with something very foreign to her.  Yes… Yes, Kami, it was longing.

“Look, you crazy fucking bastard,” she snarled quietly.  “You can be as disrespectful as you want, you can be as ungrateful as you can muster.  You can even try to be as dastardly and evil as you thought you were on Namek.  But if you think I’ll cower before you like I did then, you’re wrong.  This is _my house_.  Come at me-!!”

Bulma’s voice caught on the end of the words, but she hoped he had not heard it.  For Kami’s sake… So much for her attempt at flirtation.  If anything, he’d blast her to oblivion now and end the game before she’d even begun it.  There was silence around them inside the infirmary, save for the soft whirring of the idle MediBots.  She forced herself to keep his gaze: to grapple his position with her.  God, he was still smirking.

“Come at you?”  His voice was just this side of a whisper, and he chuckled.  It was low, deep and barely there in the first place, but it shattered the mask of her resolve.  Her arms quaked with the nearness of his body, and her shoulders trembled when his chin tilted upward.

Bulma pushed herself away from the table violently, scattering a few of the instruments left behind by the bots and shifting the bioStitch to the edge.  She abruptly longed for the silence from before.

Vegeta stood, no longer impeded by his injury, and closed the small distance between them.  His one inch gain on her height suddenly seemed like a mile, and his shadow loomed over her in the blanched lights of the room.  His lips had never wavered, and he smiled at her the way a crocodile may, if it were able, at a fresh piece of meat lying static at the edge of a river.

“ _Kaiyat’ehn…_ ” He whispered, the sound so foreign to her own language that she wondered at its meaning.  But on the edges of it, the smile faded, and his brow creased back into that deep ‘v’ of contempt and haughty derision that he had such trouble hiding.

“What--?”  Bulma’s breathy question was barely that at all.  “What the hell did you say?”

“Hn.”  He snorted at her breathlessness and looked, really _looked_ at her from head to toe before turning from her making for the door.  Just before he exited, he turned back, grinned rakishly and pressed the command panel delicately.  The doors slid open, and she watched the backside of the Saiyan Prince stride nobly down the hall – as though he hadn’t had a rib jutting out of his side only moments ago.  As though such a thing so miniscule could ever dampen his resolve.


	4. Chapter Three - Minutes of Agony

**Minutes of Agony**

_Damnherdamnherdamnher,_ damn her evil, bitch soul to the fiery depths of Hell, where his father and countless other traitor Saiyans surely awaited Vegeta’s arrival already!  Damn her and her sickly sweet scent, her pursed and trembling mouth and her curiously arched eyebrows as she analyzed his anatomy with the mind of some soul-cracked Old Empire scientist!

                Vegeta strode through the Capsule Corp residential compound like the ghost of Frieza was traipsing on his heels.  He swiped a fist against his forehead to dispel the sweat there, and snarled at the shudder of slight soreness that radiated from his newly healed bone and up into his shoulder.  Gods, it didn’t matter, as long as he could get away from that infirmary as quickly as possible – away from that evil, vicious, _fucking gorgeous_ _BITCH!_

                Surely, she’d cast some sort of spell on him, to have been  allowed such close proximity to him, all the while spitting insults at him like she was the gods chosen empress!  Most females at such a range from him would cower with apprehension, not – not openly _challenge_ him as though she were some Saiyan woman Nappa had schooled him about as an adolescent.

                Back then, Vegeta had known that only whores and fancy courtesans would do for his raging libido.  No Saiyanoid female existed, then or now, who would stand up to him so brazenly and ignite a real, authentic desire in a pure-blood like him.  Vegeta knew how to please _those other_ females, and if they didn’t want him well, then they knew how to please him; that was always enough.

                But this… This half-mad human bitch had almost made a fool of him in there.  Almost…  Imagine, speaking his own language to such an ignorant, back-water rube of a creature!  What a complete and _utter_ disgrace!  It was desperation, yes that was it.

It had probably been two years since he’d slaked any lust on a female, seeing as he’d barely had time for such things since purging Arlia, _trying_ to kill Kakarot and being murdered by the one creature in all the universe he’d _wanted_ to be murdered by.  Gods, if Frieza had killed Vegeta years ago when he’d assassinated the prince’s father and blown his home world to stardust instead of keeping him alive and… and…?

                Vegeta growled and spat absently at the innocuous walls as he made his way out of the residential compound and back through the laboratory wing.  He’d discovered through various interactions with Bulma’s sublimely oblivious sire that this was the quickest way back to the East Lawn, and the delicious, beautiful solace of the GSR.  If he didn’t destroy something small and mechanical soon, he’d have to resort to wildlife or--something larger.  But that might just land him without suitable lodgings, and the use of the GSR.  This was something he could not abide, as he had already begun to feel a surge of power since beginning his training there.  It was a spark, like a cable had been attached to him and had shot energy through his tired, struggling body.  It was the awakening, surely… The one he had felt so weak and sleepy inside him in the dream:  the one that would not oblige him, but somehow indulged his most wicked adversaries! 

                Becoming a Super Saiyan was not just his goal, Vegeta realized as he came to the main exit outside the Lab Wing and stepped into the rich, warm, springtime sunlight.  He paused for a moment in the grass, closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  _No…_   No.  Becoming a Super Saiyan was his _destiny._   It was his right – and by the Blood Goddess he would not let that blue-haired, brash piece of lusty human ass interfere anymore.  _Nononononono._

He shook his head and opened his eyes; the sun was blinding, and he still had trouble adjusting to such a pure white spectrum of light.  Having spent most of his formative years in outer space, and his early childhood on a planet with a Red Giant for a sun that burned a bit more than four hundred million miles from his home, the bright color was at times an obstacle.

The breeze was a bit raucous today; not quite a wind yet but boisterous enough to sound those ridiculous things called “chimes” that the Briefs Mother had hanging near every window surrounding the East Lawn.  It would be a capital crime to admit outwardly, but Vegeta found them oddly soothing, despite their seemingly pointless existence in general.  The deeper ones, the ones with the long and thick pieces of metal hanging from them, they reminded him of his mother…

Those vague, blurry images of her that lay deep in his memory, the way a dozing cat may lay comfortable in the corner of a warm chair.  In those days, when she was alive and he was a mere toddler, she would play melodies on Saiyan instruments that sounded – well they sounded just like those blasted chimes.

Vegeta’s brow tightened and his fist, bunched in the human shorts he’d been donning for the past several months now, clenched around a small metal object.  The ends of it pricked the skin of his palm, and he felt himself snarl.  Suddenly the chimes were not so soothing, and he turned on his heel back toward the GSR, where he could find real peace.  That thing in his palm was the only thing left that mattered, whether he had spoken the Saiyan language to that meddling woman or not:  whether those chimes reminded him of his long-dead mother or not.

There was no more Planet Vegeta.  It drifted, grave-less, in a sea of cosmic dust, with no monument to its greatness and no one to worship it in any case.  Frieza had seen to that…  He had seen to everything.  Vegeta squeezed the small metal object in his hands and cursed himself to the depths of hell for uttering that Saiyan word to the Briefs girl and her glossy pink lips.  Gods, it had just popped out as he gazed at her; proud, stupidly bold and all puffed up at him like she wanted to throw him down and fuck him right there in the infirmary.  And maybe he’d believed it then, when he’d said it, looking at her Saiyan-like body and suddenly knowing what it was like to feel _desire._

But that word, that feeling rather; nothing now was that beautiful.  Nothing in the known universe.  Except maybe the golden glow of the Legendary.

 

#

 

Bulma awoke with a start, snuffing in a breath and momentarily disoriented.  The glow of the room around her was bright and uninviting; she groaned out a protest as the harsh lighting burned her eyes.  Kami… She’d fallen asleep at her desk again.  The lab glowed, empty of all other life but her own.  She glanced about, noting that the assembly tables were empty; Vegeta had managed a full day without decimating one of the ki bots, had he?  Bulma ignored the distant disappointment at this realization. 

She sighed and looked back at her computer.  She couldn’t have been asleep long, as the screen saver hadn’t even popped up, but the results that glared back at her were the same and they were just as infuriating as they had been when she’d dozed off.  It was as she had expected:  even on Capsule Corp’s extensive research systems and databases, which included special access to government resources and Defense Operations archives, there was no researchable evidence on the Saiyan race in _any_ of those reliable sources. 

Bulma tapped her finger on the hard desk beneath her hands a few times and listened to the sound echo through the empty lab.  Even if she _wanted_ to find out what Vegeta had said to her that day in the infirmary, three days past now, she would never know.  Any verifiable reference on Saiyan language or culture had been eradicated from history, it seemed.  But Bulma could guess how that had happened; a certain little lizard-tailed bastard had seen to the near extinction of an entire species and personally executed the genocide himself.  Bulma squinted at the screen, and a fleeting sense of pity flooded her heart.  Vegeta was the only creature alive who could tell her what his words meant. 

No, there was no one else who could help her find out the words he’d used or the sentiment behind him.  Kami, the only other pure-blooded Saiyan still alive hadn’t even known he _was_ one until about 4 years ago.  Raditz and Nappa had met their untimely ends on Earth in what seemed an eternity ago, the latter at the hands of his own prince and master. 

Bulma glanced at the clock on her computer screen.  Two in the morning.  That mercilessly prideful master was probably asleep in the residential wing now, she reminded herself with a shiver.  That is if he had turned in early from his sessions in the GSR.  Rolling her eyes, Bulma stood and clutched the coffee mug resting near her mouse.  Fat lot of good that had done her.  She touched a forefinger to the upper right corner of her console, and it approved her request for shutdown.

The corridor outside her lab was dim with pre-programmed night-mode lights. Bulma shuffled down the quiet hallway with the unfortunate attentiveness of a drunken college student, and once she had made it to the residential wing and into the kitchen (its control panel newly repaired at expense of her valuable time) she had deteriorated to a sleepwalking mess.  God, if she spent much more time harping on Vegeta’s cryptic vigor the rest of her work was going to suffer – and probably to the dismay of her father.  Bulma touched the light controls on the wall, setting them dim, and hobbled to the refrigerator.  Dr. Briefs was counting on her to recalculate his miniaturization calibrator; he was dead set on the idea that more could fit into the Capsules, thus yielding more profit.  As if they needed it. 

Bulma shook her head at her father’s obstinance, though it had gained for them more than they could ever hope for.  She retrieved some cold milk and turned to place it on the counter island, where she was met with the heavy gaze of two very deep set black eyes.  She gasped loudly and started, knocking over her empty coffee mug and grimacing at the cacophony of sound that accosted her tired ears.

Vegeta sat, one knee propped on the high back chair near the counter island and his arm resting on it.  Bulma took a few deep breaths and felt her face fall from abject terror to sincere irritation.  Besides having been head-spinning startled, her anger boiled at his quite impassive appearance.  Shirtless, and glistening with sweat in the dim lights, watching her with hooded eyes, he looked like a fucking cologne campaign ad.  She snarled to hide the hateful elation she felt at seeing him.

“What the shit are you doing sitting in the dark, Vegeta?”  She snapped, picking up her coffee mug and righting it so she could infuse it with some milk.  He continued to regard her with the same indifference, but she thought she saw the barest hint of a twitch in the furrow of his dark brow.  His fist flexed into a fist, and relaxed again.

“I was thinking.  Don’t you ever just sit and think, or is that too menial a task for a genius such as yourself?”

“I think all the time, Vegeta!”  She growled in response.  “I just don’t do it in a dark kitchen at two in the morning like some creepy villain from a horror film.”

The air in the kitchen was heavy:  like soupy broth.  She wondered how long he’d been sitting there.  As the milk filled her glass in a sort of macabre slow motion, Bulma became aware that a strange sound was coming from across the counter.  Holy shit and corruption…  Vegeta was laughing.  It wasn’t that low, sexy chuckle he’d gifted her with in the infirmary three days ago, nor was it that maniacal cackle she remembered from so long ago when he’d first come to Earth with galactic domination on his mind.  No…  Great Kami, it was a real laugh.  Soft, charming, and—and—?  Bulma squeezed her eyelids shut and opened them, trying to focus on something other than that sound.  It was distracting, and wonderful.

“’Creepy’?”  He repeated the word with a kind of beguiled amusement reserved for, well, a prince.  Bulma snorted and took a sip of milk.  It calmed her roiling stomach and refreshed her brain.  She became aware that a kind of musky, earthy, not unpleasant smell was wafting around her.

“Creepy.”  She said again, miffed.  “Weird.  Scary.  Nasty.  Words you might be familiar with.”

“I know ‘scary’, and ‘nasty’.”  He replied, the smile on his lips deteriorating into something else.  “You think I’m ‘nasty’?”

Bulma squinted at him in the dim light.  Was that – on his voice?  Was that, _provocation?_ Oh, two could play that game, she thought delightedly.  No one beat Bulma Briefs at provocation and manipulation:  _no one_.  She quirked an eyebrow at him and took another sip of her drink.

“You can be.”  She told him over the rim of her mug.

His barely-there smile fell, and Bulma was momentarily disappointed.  Her bravado wavered between them like a thin sheet of glass; one tap from him and it would shatter.  She already knew that.  She could call out the reinforcements though, couldn’t she? 

“Speaking of new words, Vegeta, you could teach me some.”

There was a moment of silence before Vegeta shifted in his chair.  His knee lowered and he leaned forward on the counter, his eyes slits of unreadable emotion.  That soupy feeling came back, and the earthy scent grew stronger.  He did not respond, and the intensity of his gaze suddenly seemed to emanate heat.  But Bulma was not one to be discouraged by such a play of irritated ignorance.  He knew _exactly_ what she meant.

“You know,” she continued slowly, pouring some more milk into her mug.  “Like what you said to me the other day, after I stitched you up.  I like to know what people say to me, Vegeta.  It keeps me informed.  I like to be informed--?”

“You interrupted my thinking, and I think we are done speaking now.”  Vegeta interrupted her with all the deadly intent of a predator.  He had not stopped watching her.

Bulma watched with dismay as the imaginary thin sheet of her glass bravado shattered all over the counter and onto the kitchen floor like a rain of failure.  _Damn him_ …  He was the only one who could do it, DAMN him!  She clenched her teeth against the overflow of respect this small victory gained for him.  But no, no, she could still gain some ground.

“You could try being a bit more open about yourself, Vegeta.”  She told him.  Her voice was muted in the soupy air.  “It’s how people become accustomed to a new life and are able to live it _comfortably_.  Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

Bulma gulped some of her milk, and before any other reaction was possible, Vegeta had left his chair, shoved it to the side with a vicious _scrape_ , and was in front of her in an instant.  Her back slammed against the closed refrigerator, and her coffee mug dropped unceremoniously to the floor.  The ceramic floor cracked and broke the mug, and it joined the shards of her courage that already lay there.  She could hear the faint trickle of the milk as it pooled at their feet. 

Vegeta’s arms braced against the refrigerator, effectively trapping her.  It was in that moment that she realized; that earthy, musky scent was coming from him, and it was altogether invigorating.  It was like a breath of fresh air, a gulp of rushing wind.  She gulped and looked into his black glare, his dilated pupils focused right on her face like darts pointed at a target.  And she was swallowed whole by his presence.

“ _What is it with you?_ ”  He hissed.  She could feel his breath on her face, as she had in the infirmary before.  But his question was lost on her reeling mind.

“Wh-what the hell are you talking about?  Back up, Vegeta, you’re in my space!”

The fridge creaked behind her, and she realized he had pressed up against it further.  He was not about to back away.  Her heart thrummed in her chest and his proximity made the hair on her arms stand on end.  His aura was a bit flared up, wasn’t it?

“I said, ‘what is it with you’?”  He asked again, emphasizing the words with pointed aggression.  “You invite me here; give me shelter, clothing, food…  You even give me a place to train and yet, if I’m not mistaken, I’m responsible for the deaths of several of your friends.  You heal me, you stand up straight in front of me and you don’t back down.  You ask me to let you _help_ me, like you think I know what that even means.

“So; _what the fuck is it with you?_ ”

Bulma watched as his façade began to burn right in front of her.  She was entranced, completely mesmerized by the sight until he shook his head and doused it.  The scowl was back on his face, which still hovered mere inches from hers.

“Y-you…?”  God dammit she would _not_ stutter.  Not now.  “You can’t just live the rest of your life so totally alone.”

The fridge creaked louder, and if it were possible, he leaned in closer.

“I’ve done a pretty damn good job of it until now, _Bulma_.” 

Had he ever actually said her name, before?  With a gulp, Bulma breathed against his mouth.  She’d no choice really, and her bid to remain in control of herself was waning.  She could back down now, right?  She could slink to the floor against the poor, abused kitchen appliance behind her and just beg him to leave her alone.  She could sit in that pool of milk until he left and then weep into it with relief at his exit.  But that was unacceptable.  Completely, utterly, unacceptable.  Bulma sucked in her breath; she sucked in the air around her that smelled, _tasted_ , of him.

“What the fuck is it with _you?_ ”  She insisted with full voice and tenor.  “I offered you all of those things to give you a second chance, so you could prove who you really are, and since you can’t wrap that around your twisted little mind you think you can intimidate me?  Scare me every time I try to offer you friendship--?”

“Is _that_ what you’re offering me?”  Vegeta growled, pressing the tip of his nose against hers.  Something had changed about his candor this time, Bulma thought.  He was suspicious, calculating.

“Great Kami, Vegeta,” she seethed quietly.  “What the hell else would it be?  You can hardly even accept something as gracious as that!”

In a moment, he had slammed his palms up against the fridge and turned from her with a growl that settled on the edges of a snarl.  The poor fridge tilted slightly on its feet and noisily resumed its balance behind her.  A few magnets scattered around her feet and dipped into the pool of milk there.  Bulma watched with wide, glassy eyes as Vegeta clenched his fists and pressed both of them onto the counter island, his bare back to her.

The dim lights of the kitchen shone against his skin, marred as she remembered from the first time she had seen it.  Bulma wondered at those scars for a moment; where had each one come from?  Who had given them to him?  Was it a weapon, a ki blast, a mere finger?  Despite that he was silent now, and his back was heaving up and down with laden breaths, she stepped forward.  Her hair, still pushed back by her headband, yet precariously so, stuck to the back of her neck.  Kami, could it really be so hot in here?  Or perhaps it was the aura of the seething warrior who still stood with his back to her; the counter creaked under the pressure of his thick hands, just as the refrigerator had.

With a jarring clarity, Bulma could sense that so far she had not failed as miserably in her personal quest as she had thought.  Yamcha’s words came back to her in the silent, full air of the kitchen.  _You can’t flirt with a maniac alien…_   He’d said.  No, maybe not, she reasoned.  But if she could only, just—just a little bit more!

Her fingers were spreading before she could stop them, and she reached out for his bare skin.  The desire to touch him again tingled in the tips of those digits like pins and needles.  His whole body seemed to glow with magnetism; by the Holy Dragon, it was almost as though he was asking to be touched.  But that could not be true, Bulma reasoned.  Not Vegeta.

The beat of her heart resounded in her ears until her skin touched his.  Surely only seconds had passed, but it felt like minutes – minutes of agony until that glorious heat flushed through her fingers and up her arm, into her throat.  Vegeta’s body was like a flame in the depths of winter, and she a fluttering moth.  Her full palm was against his back, in the hollow between his shoulder blades, before he spun around and clamped her wrist in his fist so tightly that she gasped and bent over from the pain.

Just before she squinted, she saw that his face had gone slack at her gasp.  His grip loosened, and she stood straight to look at him again.  She was so close that she could feel his energy, as well as she remembered that of Son kun.  But he did not let go, and he did not look away.  Bulma saw in his eyes the same wild, contemptuous fear he had shown her in the hallway when she came close to him.  And then she knew what she had to do.

“Vegeta…”  She said, catching her breath on the words.  “Kami, I’m not trying to hurt you!”

“Then what are you doing?”  His voice was steady, clear, and unafraid.  His fingers tightened again, and he tugged on her wrist.  Bulma sucked in a breath and held it there; it was hot, searing air.

“Shit, Vegeta,” she said through clenched teeth.  “It’s called ‘comfort’.”

He shifted on his feet and faced her head on.  His nose touched hers again, and all she could see was the black of his eyes – like the darkest and most insidious night.  Bulma could not look away from that multiple vehicle car wreck anymore than she could the first time she’d seen him.  Vegeta cocked his chin to the side, though it seemed his muscles could barely stand the movement.

“That is not what touching is for.”

Bulma gaped at him, at the candor of his voice, and the deadly accuracy with which he held her gaze.  She swallowed; maybe he could feel the movement, she thought.  His fist still gripped her wrist, though not so tightly.

“It is for us,” she said finally.

She stood, spine straight and locked into his gaze.  Vaguely, she realized that a heat greater than the kind he was giving off had begun to gather in her center.  It traveled slowly up her chest and down to her womb, where it settled and was left to a heavy, smoldering ember.  Oh, shit…  She wanted him.  Badly.  _Shitshitshit, he could probably smell it!_   Bulma gathered her wits and willed the fire in her to die; this went way beyond her personal challenge.  Too far, too far…  And then, Kami help her, his grip tightened on her wrist and he pressed his lips together.

“Beautiful.”  He said; the word was simple and clear.

“What?”  She gasped, mortified by the desperate whisper in her voice.  Oh, _fuck_ this would not end well.

“Beautiful.”  He said again.  “In the infirmary.  I said, ‘beautiful’.”

There was no time even to blink as he released her wrist and exited the kitchen with a gust of wind so brisk that Bulma’s knees nearly buckled.  She glanced around the kitchen as though perhaps he may still be hiding there somewhere, ready to pounce on her and end her simple existence with one crack of the neck.  But he was gone, the milky footprints his boots had made trailed to the door where one was cut in half by the doorframe.  The musky, earthy scent still hung heavy in the air and in her nose.

By the bloody Kaio-shin and all the guardians of the galaxy.  _Beautiful._   Who would know the Saiyan language could harbor such terms?  No one but Vegeta.

Bulma righted herself and bent down to begin cleanup of the metaphorical mess on the floor.  She gazed into the dim, brown/orange lights of the kitchen as she picked up the pieces of her coffee mug, her eyes glassy and far away.  She thought of Vegeta when he had first come to Earth; let herself imagine who he had been before that, and the life he had known.  Yes, for Vegeta his words were true as any she had said, and no one had ever touched him because they’d wanted to comfort him.  Had anyone touched him with anything but malice in all his years?  Even in lust, in passion?

As she crouched there, the heat still gathered and pulsing inside her more powerfully than she had felt in a long while, Bulma was resolute.  Even if she couldn’t learn how to speak his language…  He would learn hers.


	5. Chapter Four - You Do

**You Do**

                Summer was coming.  She could tell by the color of the sky, the gentle but pungent smell of growing grass and the angle of the sun on her neck.  It was warm and relaxed the tight muscles around her shoulders with the sincerity of a lover.  Bulma sighed and shifted her legs out in front of her on the grass so as to catch more warm trickles of sunlight on her bare legs.  Her work shorts were entirely too hot now; even by the beginning of summer, West City was a notoriously hot and humid metropolis with little to no reprieve until late autumn.

                There may be some just for a moment, though, she realized as dark clouds gathered in the west and threatened rain.  A distant flash of light echoed in those grey depths, and Bulma reluctantly gathered herself to a standing position so that she might cover up her father’s miniaturization engine with the tarp she’d carelessly thrown to the side earlier. 

                Bulma had been working on the recalibration since seven this morning on the North Lawn of the compound, and her limbs moaned in protest at her having prostrated herself on her back for at least the past four hours while she picked at the calibration mainframe.  Something hadn’t clicked in after her initial calculations, and the engine itself was now at a standstill; it simply wouldn’t start.  The error messages flashed irritatingly at her as she gathered up the tarp, and Bulma vowed that the day would not end before she had been successful.  Dr. Briefs was a patient scientist and a stereotypically apathetic genius who mostly could not be bothered a whit about the problems every day people faced.  But Bulma had inherited her mother’s empathy and general interest in the outside world (not to mention her killer body and fabulous hair), and the daughter at least could carry on a relevant conversation with most people.

                This realization brought her to another issue; in order to make it back to the Lab Wing and discuss today’s findings with her father, thereby leading her to the glorious solitude of the shower and probably a few barbecue chips, she would need to traipse through the East Lawn alone.  This of course would lead her past the GSR, and Bulma did not trust herself a simple, cursory glance it its direction.

                It had been a week since Vegeta’s abrupt departure from that nighttime kitchen, leaving her to stare at his footprints in her slightly aroused yet utterly ambivalent state.  The man, or rather the _Saiyan_ , was a complete aggravation.  In fact, after that encounter Bulma had been less inclined to test his limits than she had been before.  Though she had held her ground – though she hadn’t let him take a victory – he had scared her.  But Bulma’s one small comfort in that awareness was that, well, she was pretty sure she had scared him, too.  Imagine, Bulma Briefs scaring an intergalactic space pirate with an unresolved Napoleon complex and homicidal anger issues!

                But that was where the amusement ended.  Part of Vegeta’s fear, she realized, was not necessarily that she was a fearful creature.  His fear was something different; it was a deep-seated, instinctual need to be left alone.  Contact, whether intentional or not, was something he controlled with despairing need.  And that night, well, he had not been in control.  Bulma should have reveled in that fact; she was a masterful controller, and came by it honestly.  But the dizzying intensity of his wariness was pitiable, really.  Like Vegeta, Bulma could hardly find joy in defeating a wounded thing…

                She sighed and swiped at a spot of lubricant that had stained her work shorts.  Well, at some point she would need to walk by the GSR.  She certainly couldn’t stand here all afternoon, wind buffeting her voluminous curls, staring into the distance like some kind of water bird.  Besides, even from here she could smell cookies.  Her mother was not one to let a day go by without some kind of culinary adventure.

                Bulma gathered her various accoutrements, tools and paraphernalia and stomped purposefully toward the East Lawn.  She wouldn’t even look at the GSR, she resolved.  But as she came closer and closer, the grass brushing her bare ankles, the urge to sneak a peek into Capsule 3’s porthole window was nearly overwhelming.

                _Get a hold of yourself, Briefs!_   She ground her teeth together and, as the rounded top of the GSR slowly came into view over a row of pine trees, Bulma listened intently for the gentle hum of its engine and readied herself for the heat that would be spewing forth from the exhaust valve that faced the North Lawn.  She was intrigued to discover neither when she came to the tree line and stepped through the tall trunks behind the GSR.

                As Bulma rounded the capsule, she found herself tiptoeing.  The silence that surrounded the East Lawn was nearly as deafening as it was confusing.  There was no way Vegeta had stopped for the day, and she was hard-pressed to believe that he hadn’t even begun.  It was now nearly six in the evening and the grouchy prince, though an unpredictable mess of a creature, was largely consistent in his routine.  Bulma struggled with her pack full of tools and instruments, shoving some wayward parts more securely into the bag and continuing on toward the front of the GSR.  As she gazed up and around the sphere, she noted a form inconsistent with that familiar shape just near the top. 

                Bulma stopped walking, and the breeze began to kick up as the dark clouds headed swiftly toward West City.  Thunder rumbled in the distance, and she stared with unchecked curiosity at the back end of the figure on the roof of the GSR.  It was Vegeta.

                He stood at the very top of the spacepod, arms crossed and feet shoulder-width apart in typical stance.  His gaze was lifted heavenward, and he was watching the growing storm with unhindered concentration.  Bulma steered as close to the walls of the capsule as she could, without losing sight of the Saiyan Prince, and watched with glaring curiosity.

                Minutes went by and yet he had not moved.  Bulma waited by the control panel and clutched her sack.  She wondered if he had heard her or felt her ki, but he made no indication to that effect.  And now that she could see a bit better she noticed that his black eyes, the ones that had scared the life out of her in the kitchen that night, were closed.  They were not cinched shut in pain or anger, though, she noted, but simply lidded.  And though his brow was set in his trademark ‘v’, it seemed, somehow, softer…

                A rumble of thunder sounded, louder now and closer, and the sky had begun to darken over the Capsule Corp compound.  Kami, she hoped her mother wouldn’t look out of the kitchen window to observe the coming storm; she would have a clear view of the East Lawn.  She’d surely see Bulma in an instant and probably call out to her, ruining this odd little interlude in a heartbeat.

                Bulma could smell the rain coming.  One always could at this time of year.  The warmth of the daytime sun beating down on concrete and asphalt would melt away as the pureness of water streamed over it.  It was not a smell she could easily forget, and nor was the man she watched now, perched on the tip top of Capsule 3 as though lightening were not a thing to be feared.  But for him, Bulma reasoned, for him maybe it was not.

                She continued to watch with abject fascination as his arms came down to his sides, fists still clenched against the sides of his thighs and hanging there like naked hammers of his rage.  Bulma saw, dimly, that his bare arms were tensing and his chin had lowered.  Though his eyes were still closed, there was emotion there that she had never seen before.  A flash of lightening illuminated the darkened sky and startled her into submission against the wall of the GSR.

                Bulma hissed out a curse as a few electronic stabilizers tumbled from her sack, and the rain began to pour down in sheets over the sensitive insides of them.  She bent to shove them back into her bag and stood with her arms pressed against the walls of the capsule.  The torrents of sudden rain pooled against her fists and beat down the rush of curls down her back.  Daring to look up again, as Vegeta had surely heard the calamity below him, she expected him to be gone.  Perhaps battling the storm in a way only he knew how, or even in the opposite direction to Kami only knew where.

                But he was still there.  Vegeta’s body had not moved, but his eyes were open and glaring down at her from his post with wild, questioning eyes.  A few, paralyzing seconds passed, and Bulma held in the breath impending to rush from her lungs in a violent _puff_ of awkward fear.  His eyes continued to bore into her with a threatening demand, and without a word she bolted.  It was the first time since Namek that she had run from him.

                Her bare, soaking wet legs rushed through the rain drenched grass, across the East Lawn and toward the double-door entrance to the lab wing.  It was in sight now, and Bulma nearly dropped her bag of supplies as she came to the wet concrete and punched in the unlock sequence on the doors.  The rain beat at her back, and a crack of thunder drew out an unwitting moan of frustration as the panel did not accept her password.  _God damn her trembling fingers!_ Bulma slammed a wet fist against the wall in fury that a mere glare could affect her so.  But as she lifted her fingers to the command panel once again, it was too late.

                Vegeta’s hand was on her shoulder and he was spinning her around in the rain until her back was pressed against the corner under the stone awning.  It hurt, and she slammed both palms against his wet, bare chest.  A loud _smack_ echoed against the walls of the wing entrance.

                “What the _fuck_ , Vegeta!”  She screeched at him, hoping that her affected ire would conceal her earlier indiscretion.

                He stared at her for a moment, in silence, until his nostrils flared and his lip curled upward in the vaguest of snarls.  Bulma blinked as a droplet of water fell from one soaking curl and into her eye.  It slid over the curve of her lip and under her wet chin.

                “Why were you watching me?”  He demanded suddenly, his voice rasping against the resounding deluge around them.  She did not answer, feigning ignorance, and cocked her chin to the side.

                She did not expect him to press a palm full against her shoulder and step forward until he was as close to her as he had been in the kitchen a week ago.  His expression went from disgust, to something Bulma was very familiar with by now:  attraction.  And then it was gone again in an instant, back to the powerful disgust she had seen a mere moment prior.  She squinted at him.

                “Why were you watching me--?!”  He demanded again, rainwater spilling over his wild hair and splashing gently across her cheeks.

                This time her anger trumped the desire she felt again in her loins, heavy and aggravating.  She pushed back, and though he could have, Vegeta did not resist.  He stepped away from her; a foot of volatile aura separated them, and his expression was unreadable.  Bulma pressed her lips together and pushed her bag closer to the door with her foot.  She pressed both palms against the corner of wall behind her and pushed out so that she was standing steadily again.

                “I wasn’t _watching_ you!”  She demanded, her voice wild and shaking.  It echoed across the East Lawn and was followed by another crack of thunder.  His hands clenched into fists again, and he took a deep breath.  Vegeta pointed at her.

                “Do not watch me like that!”

                “Like _what_?”  She hollered, taking another step forward.

                “In the shadows like a conniving little _bitch!_ ” He shouted, but his voice overtook hers by a mile.  Bulma stopped, though her heart willed her to move forward even further.  The rain trailed down her chin now, and she ruffled at his name-calling.

                “You asshole!”  She raged, clenching her own small fists into little balls of fury.  “You see tricks and deception everywhere you look!  Get some fucking therapy, Vegeta!  There’s no one here who follows your every move!”

                Vegeta took three steps forward and was in front of her again, his palm pressed against the space between her collar bone and her breast.  Rainwater dripped from his sharp, regal nose and onto the ridges between his fingers when he pressed her back up against the wall.

                “No?”  He asked, this time with a note of something very unfamiliar in his voice.  Bulma swallowed convulsively and shook her head.  But Vegeta’s eyes bored into her with hot insistence, and his fingers spread wide.  They slid closer to her throat, until his two middle fingers were pressing against her pulse.  “You do.”  He said then, and his words sliced her belly like a hot butter knife.

                “Like I could give a good goddamn,” she hissed defiantly.

                “ _Tu’sha La!_ ”  He laughed, actually laughed as he pressed against her with his palm.  He sneered, and leaned into her mouth, again as he had done before.  “That means ‘bullshit’!”

                And then he pushed away.  The cool rain was a blessing, and Bulma let out a few carefully moderated gasps of air as he backed away from her, his eyes dancing on the viciousness of his words.  He snarled on the edge of his grin.

                “The simulation modifier is set at four hundred fifty times normal gravity.  Fix the permissions so I can set it higher!”  He insisted, and turned to walk away back toward Capsule 3.

                Bulma let her gasps come more heavily now, and she watched that ‘won’t quit’ ass stride away from her until he was levitating back to the top of the GSR.  She reached behind her and entered the unlock codes, but did not enter the opening doors until it was possible to tear her eyes away from his still and unbreakable figure.

 

#

 

                If Vegeta had known how difficult it would be carrying on a conversation with Dr. Briefs, while still dripping wet from the recent storm and agitated by the flaming aura that Earth woman had infused on him, he would have avoided the man altogether.  But reason dictated that, after his encounter with Bulma, the usually perky and assertive wench would probably not reassign permissions to the GSR. 

                At the moment, Dr. Briefs regarded him with a gentle curiosity that was usually reserved for small animals that had become lodged in a laboratory puzzle.  Vegeta gnashed his teeth together at the sound of the other man’s quiet hesitance.

                “Well…” the scientist managed, “in theory, if you’ve already been training successfully at four hundred fifty times gravity, then setting it to five hundred may not have an immediate effect on your body.  It would be safe for say, fifteen minutes.”

                “And then?”  Vegeta ground out, imagining that perhaps that sort of pressure was exactly what he needed to exert on his body in order to reach his goal.  “What then?”

                “Well, ahhh…?”  Dr. Briefs paused and pointed the eraser of his pencil against his wide computer screen.  “After fifteen minutes, and I’m no doctor of internal medicine but, with that kind of pressure your organs would start to shut down.  The volume of your blood would weigh more than your entire body does now.”

                “Those are Earthling calculations.”  Vegeta told him.  “Recalibrate it for Saiyan capabilities.”

                “Well, I ahh---?  Actually, I have, son.”  Dr. Briefs said.  His statement was more crushing than the GSR itself.  Vegeta clenched his fists and felt the white tank he’d thrown on tighten over his tensing shoulders.  “You’ve pushed yourself pretty far, Vegeta.”  The doctor was speaking to him with some amount of clarity now.

                Vegeta thought of that plebian moron Kakarot, that purple-haired mock Saiyan who had destroyed Frieza with a sword… A _sword!_   He put both hands flat on Dr. Briefs’ work desk and breathed out, hard.

                “Do you think so, old man?”  He asked, fairly certain that his voice had deteriorated into a growl that echoed the absent Oozaru inside him.  Shit, he couldn’t even utilize that power anymore thanks to a waste of life fat-man who’d robbed him of the only truly Saiyan facet of him he’d had left.  The doctor regarded him with the same obstinance as did his daughter.  At least he knew where the arrogance came from.

                “Well, yes,” Dr. Briefs replied matter-of-factly.  “The GSR has been monitoring your vital signs for at least a month now, and--?”

                “WHAT?”  Vegeta raged, suddenly furious that these… _hacks_ , with their little, tinkering toys and their insidious diversions should be monitoring his every move.  _Gods_ , it was like--!  Gods, it was like being in a regen tank, staring out at Frieza’s smiling, bemused face.

                Vegeta’s palms pressed heavily down on the work desk, and Dr. Briefs’s eyes flickered down as the legs of the solidly soldered construct creaked loudly.  The hesitance and slight confusion had returned to the doctor’s eyes, and Vegeta felt his nostrils flare. 

                “Well, you understand, son.”  The doctor’s brow lifted in what looked like genuine concern.  But Vegeta knew better… Yes, he knew that look all too well.  “Bulma had the equipment installed after your rib fracture compounded.  Your insides were a mess.  That injury could have killed you, you know that, right?”

                “Feh!”  Vegeta huffed, shoving away from the work desk with a violent burst of ki.  Some papers flew in all directions and fluttered around the doctor like heavy snow.  He pointed one firm finger at Dr. Briefs.  “You will remove that equipment from the GSR immediately!”

                The old quack’s eyes widened only slightly, and Vegeta felt his ire ball into the fists of his hands until small ki dans were resting there, glowing like little trophies of his past fits of fury.  He took a few quick, deep breaths and willed himself to control it.  Good gods, if he unleashed the Beast now who knew what the consequences would be?  As he watched Dr. Briefs and contemplated what must be done to counter this grave insult, Vegeta felt his eyebrow twitch.

                They would not study him like some kind of filthy fucking lab rat!  By the god Vash’halla, they would _not!_   If there was anything in his life he had detested more than the beatings…  More than the abuse, more than the name-calling and the constant reminder of his long-forgotten throne, it was being observed by those soulless space physicians whose idea of ethics was a basic need for a live subject:  and obedience of Frieza at all costs.  His chest heaved, and the light material of his top was tight against the bulk of his bulging shoulders.  They were always the first to pop out, he thought, when he was ready to murder something.  But as he continued to stare, and Dr. Briefs blinked wordlessly, Vegeta remembered the thunderstorm – and he remembered her blazing blue eyes as they challenged his every whim with defiance so firm that it made his blood sing.

                He turned from the ogling doctor and exited the lab with a vicious ferocity.  His aura, still flaring, caused a warning signal to sound loudly at the door control panel.  Vegeta would find a way to disable the equipment himself.  That would piss her off.  Yes, it would piss her off enough that she would come looking for him.  Because she did care, just as he had told her outside in the storm; she cared, and her interest, her concern, her attraction (the gods damn her), whatever it was it was dangerous.  Bulma Briefs would find him, and she would know just what happens when you challenge a full-blooded Saiyan with a vengeful hate streak the size of Shenlon’s cock.

 

#

 

                It was still raining.  It hadn’t stopped for hours and in fact, the rain was beating down so heavily on the curved sides of the GSR that it was drowning out the sound of Vegeta’s steady, deep breathing.  He’d had the simulator turned off for about an hour now, and was sitting near the control panel where he had successfully found the mainframe access to Bulma’s ‘bioStatus’ program.  She certainly hadn’t concealed its purpose from him, which was curious.  Had she not known how furious it would make him, knowing that she could see everything from his heart rate, to his blood pressure, to how many times he’d failed to block a ki blast from one of her floating bots and vomited up a mouthful of blood in the process?

                The blood rushed in Vegeta’s ears as the warning peal went off again, straight from the mainframe access.  It told him again that bioStatus processes were not functioning, and that immediate restart was required.  She’d even programmed the software to disengage the gravity simulation if for some reason the bioStatus was non-functional.  Surely, she’d have noticed by now, he thought.  If she’d been monitoring him as closely as was evident, well… 

                By the gods that bitch made him livid; and if one other little tidbit of realization had hit him whilst he sat here, stewing in his unadulterated wrath, it was that she also made him want to pin her to a wall and see just what a naked earthling looked like underneath all that bravado and aggression.  _Fuck her, and her naked tits_… _!_   Gods, but that was the problem, wasn’t it? 

                Vegeta pound his fist against the mainframe access panel and felt a few pieces fly off of the board; they hit him square in his chest and bounced off the still slightly damp tank he’d thrown on earlier.  One stuck to the soft material, and as he kept a hard stare on the entrance to the GSR he picked it off of his stone-tensed pectoral and flicked it at the flashing alert lamp near the door.  The hard piece of plastic shattered the LED lamp, and lodged itself in the wall behind it.  Vegeta’s lips quirked; the com panel was blinking, and the holo screen flickered to life about five feet from him.

                The sight of her angry, half-mad glare was so energizing that he grinned ear-to-ear.  Bulma’s teeth were clenched, her primped hair was shaking (along with the rest of her) and her eyebrows were furrowed so deeply between her eyes that one could barely make out the separation of the two.  She was clearly dressed for bed, a light blue tank top clutching the perky roundness of her breasts and clinging to the curve of her stomach and hips.  Her hair, still high on her head, was pulled back from that small, commanding forehead.  Vegeta chuckled low in his chest before she even spoke.

                “Why did you disengage the bioStatus?”  Her voice came to life, and the sound made the GSR echo with excitement.  She was calmer than he expected.

                “Why were you monitoring me?”  Vegeta asked, his chin resting, gentleman-like, on his folded fingers.  He crossed both legs and promptly threw both onto the command panel of the mainframe.  Bulma’s eyebrows twitched, and she stood back from the holo projector.  She patted her hair back a bit and pointed a finger at him.

                “Turn it back on.”  She said.  The candor of her voice told him that she was still a bit shaken from their encounter in the rain, earlier.

                “No.”  Vegeta replied, encouraged.  If she wanted to spar again, his crowing blood would oblige her.

                To his delight, Bulma stood straight and puffed out her chest.  There she was again:  bold, furious, alluring Earth Woman.  The hesitation had died in her, Vegeta realized.  She snarled and switched off the holo screen, and he smirked.

                Moments passed, and each one felt like an eternity as he waited for her.  Thunder still rumbled high above in the stormy night sky and it resonated in his limbs, the distant lightening joining with his ki in a glorious wedding of animosity and elation.  He remained seated and fought back the urge to bite his knuckles in anticipation.

                Finally, wondrously, the com panel flashed near the GSR entrance and it opened.  Bulma stood, almost soaked by the rain (she had clearly run from the compound to the East Lawn), panting heavily with exhaustion and irritation.  Vegeta’s eyes narrowed, and he couldn’t help the evil little grin on his face.  He did not watch her directly as she entered, but he saw her clearly.

                Bulma stood, panting, with her feet apart in attack stance.  Her fists were clenched at her sides, and she glowered at him with all the daring she could muster.  Her blue top was spattered wet by the rain, and a pair of white shorts inched up her rounded bottom as easily as a pair of hands.  The blue curls on her head were sprinkled with water.  Before she spoke, Bulma let out a growl so unlike her prissy, outward appearance that Vegeta felt his groin twitch at the sound of it.  Gods, it was so absurd and so lovely all at once.

                “If I could, I’d kick your ass, Vegeta.”  She told him.  And he believed her.  His eyes found hers, finally, and he remained seated.  Bulma’s blue, blue eyes were alight with fury.  He chuckled again, and this time she could hear him.

                “I bet you would, Earthling.”

                “My name is _Bulma!_ ”  She shouted, and the sound resonated against the ki-absorbing walls she’d installed just days after his ‘incident’.  “And _you_ are going to enable to bioStatus program, or this simulator will not function.”

                “Why did you install it, _Bulma?_ ”  He asked her, the picture of calm.  Inside though…  Inside his guts and loins were roiling with delight.

                “I installed it because you nearly killed yourself – twice!”  Her voice was gaining volume and tenor.  “You’re welcome to do so in any other spaceship, in any other galaxy or any other planet but _not_ in my father’s capsule!”

                “Aw, now,” Vegeta began, and shifted so that he was sitting in the chair facing her.  His feet were planted firmly on the ground and his elbows leaned against each leg so he could lean forward.  “We both know you don’t mean that.”

                Suddenly Bulma was striding toward him, and she stopped just short of a foot from him.  For the first time he was glad she did stop; her proximity made his nerves go haywire, and his groin was stirring again.  Oh, gods, that bitch…  She plumped her lips a bit and squinted at him.

                “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”  She growled.  Vegeta smiled.  It was a perfectly evil, menacing one and he was proud of it.

                “You don’t mean that.”  He said again, and shook his head slowly.  He could see that Bulma wanted to strangle him – or maybe do something else to him.

She leaned forward, hands on her hips, and she let loose a smile of her own.  It danced on those glistening lips like droplets of crystallized water on Planet Indira, where the cold nitrogen in her atmosphere made rain fall like glassy snow.  Vegeta remembered that lovely sight, just shortly before Nappa had charged his ki and began killing Indirans like flies.

“Even if I did care, what difference would it make to you?”  She hissed.  “I care, and you don’t care.  That’s the end of it, isn’t it?”

“ _Tu’sha La…_ ”  He replied softly.  This time she knew exactly what he meant, and his voice faded on the final ‘ _ahhh_ ’, into a giddy sort of moan.  He pressed both palms together and rubbed them back and forth.  Something in her ki stirred when he spoke those Saiyan words, and he basked in her seeming discomfort.

Bulma came further toward him, but this time her closeness set his nerves back on edge.  He stood with quick attention, knowing that the wary shake in his eyes had returned.  What if… Gods, what if she _touched_ him again, the way she had in the kitchen?  She seemed to sense his returning walls, but she did not back down completely.  The wench…

“So?”  She asked, very quietly.  “So what if it’s bullshit?  So, I care if you hurt yourself or kill yourself or do whatever you can to punish yourself for some past evil.  Why is that so hard to accept, Vegeta?  Why can’t you wrap your mind around it?”

Her words were now more infuriating than any giddiness he may have felt moments ago.  How the hell would _she_ know what he was punishing himself for?  How in the names of all the gods could she possibly have any concept of real, honest _evil?_   This time, Vegeta snarled.

“Don’t monitor me like a lab specimen.”  He told her.  She squinted again, but this time her eyes were not so angry.  They were curious.  “Don’t.”  He said again, and fought back the images that the words brought to his real and present memory.

Bulma reached down beside them and tapped the control panel.

“If you don’t enable the program, the simulator will not function.  And I won’t override it for you, because I won’t let you die on the press of my conscience.”

With that, she turned and headed back for the exit.  Vegeta’s patience reached the end of its fuse and exploded into little, symbolic sparks of rage as she left the GSR and trudged back out into the rain.  He went after her.

Bulma hadn’t gotten far by the time he reached her, and he gripped her slippery shoulder with hungry intent.  She stopped as he spun her to face him, and snarled.  Oh gods, and her tank top was soaking wet.  It clung to those perky, bouncy tits of hers and revealed a pink-shaded sort of support garment underneath.  It too clung to her like wet, hungry hands.  Vegeta snarled back at her, wondering if she was aware of the way their exchange resembled the beginnings of a real, honest fight.  Her white shorts were soaked heavy with the rain, and all he saw underneath was untouched skin.

“Override that thing, bitch!”  He shouted at her, his voice coming painfully sharp up his throat.  The rain pelted his face, and he saw the streams of it spray off his lips as he breathed harshly against the humid air.

“NO, dickhead!”  She shouted back with some insult so far unfamiliar to him.

The sound of it was exotic and exciting.  That stirring was back, and he put two hands on her shoulders.  The rainwater turned hot underneath his grip, and Bulma gasped as he swung her around and pushed her back up against the GSR wall.

“Override it – NOW!”  He said into her face, stunned at the way his voice faded in its ferocity.

“No.”  She said through clenched teeth.

Her ki was fluttering along the edges of wrath and passion.  The gods damn her…   _Damn her!_   He thought as he pushed his whole body against hers.  Shit and corruption, his cock twitched to life against the soft press of her thighs.  And she could feel it, because her face tilted toward him, and she gazed at him with clear, confused amazement.  Fucking hell, his body had betrayed him.  Vegeta fought hard to retain his command of the situation, though the look on the wench’s face told him that it was waning.

One of his hands lifted from her shoulder and pushed sodden, matted curls away from her face.  The gesture was not gentle, or comforting, he made sure of that as she continued to watch him.  His arm framed her head from one side to the other, and he spread his fingers wide over her cheek.  This female, this… _thing_ from Earth, of which he had so little knowledge other than that she looked remarkably Saiyan in body and stance:  she would not break him.  Right now though, his raging libido was getting the better of him.  He took a few deep breaths, and some water dripped between their lips.  It was hot like lava, and his body, from fingers to loins to toes, ached with a distant longing.  Oh, gods, it was sweet and agonizing all at once.

“Turn.  On.  The simulator.”  He said, murmuring the words like some kind of sick poetry.

But Bulma, now so emboldened by his obvious weakness – his fucking shameless weakness – smiled vaguely and leaned into his mouth.

“No.”  She said again; a world of abject defeat in that single word.  He snarled.

Vegeta crushed his mouth against hers, against those plush, wet lips that issued a muffled gasp against his onslaught.  Her hands gathered in the wet material of his shirt and squeezed delightfully.  All the gods, why did it have to be her?  But as he forced his tongue past her still stiff and worrying lips, he realized:  she was the only one who would fight back.  The latent, Saiyan instinct in the far-reaches of his troubled mind suddenly became overwhelming when her mouth faltered and began accepting his with a feverish want.  Well, shit, that was that wasn’t it?  His body surged with the life of arousal.  He gasped against her mouth with the unexpected power of it and ground his hips against hers.  She whimpered against his deep, demanding kiss and pressed one palm against his collarbone.

Oh, gods, and those damned tits of hers – pressing up against him and soaking wet, begging to be seen by someone who _wanted_ something delicious to look at, and touch… And nipandsuckandlick…  His arm left the circle around her head and shifted to fiercely grab one pert, heavy breast in his searing hot hand.  Ooooh, that was soft and lovely, with a hard little nub at the center of his palm that begged him for something more…

In an instant, Bulma’s mouth wrenched from his and she put her other palm out to shove against him, hard.  The rain was suddenly cold and shocking, because he knew what she was doing.  Vegeta’s raging hard on danced a slow death along the edges of his fading arousal, and he stepped away from her, breathless with confusion.  Who the fuck was she to push him away?  _Who the fuck was she--?!_

Bulma stared at him for a few, agonizing seconds and for the first time he did not know what emotion was crouching in the blue depths of her eyes.  The pain of his thwarted lust dared him to speech.

“Still afraid of me, are you, Earth Woman?”

Her expression changed, and in it he saw a glint of something he despised.  She edged closer to him again, shaking her head and pulling at some wet strands of hair near her mouth.  Her chest heaved as she approached, and one hand reached out to him – like she had in the kitchen.  Like she had when she’d wanted to _comfort_ him.  No… To pity him.  By the Blood Goddess, he hated pity.

“I’m not afraid of you, Vegeta.”  She said then, and her fingers came closer to his jaw.

But just as the soft tips of them came into contact with his skin, and the warmth from them eased the tightness from those bunched up  muscles, he swatted her hand away with the same violent unease he’d felt in the kitchen that night.  Bulma watched him, and she put one hand on the wrist he had slapped away.  She pressed her dripping wet lips together and shook her head again.  She gestured with both hands at her body, still so hot and emanating a ki whose glow only he could see.

“This takes a lot more work than that, Vegeta.”  She nodded once in the direction of the hand that had slapped her away.

And then she was gone, shuffling through the soppy ground back toward the lab entrance.  Vegeta turned his head to watch her retreating backside and cursed the day he’d ever seen her.  Something entirely different than rage boiled in his gut until it was bursting out of him with a roar, and a flash of rushing ki.  But gods, what was it?  He wasn’t even sure if he _cared_ to know it!  But he was sure she could hear and feel his outburst, she hadn’t even gotten inside.  But she did not look back, and Vegeta took off into the sky, into the rainstorm until, despite the continuing deluge, his aura had dried his sodden hair.


	6. Chapter Five - Like a Swan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello All! Having had some awesome conversations with some lovely ladies (you all know who you are), I finally managed to beat this chapter out of my brain.  
> Today, a huge, gi-normous thanks to Adli (ti_ana) for beta-reading this for me. It is a tough job to edit someone’s work and I am so grateful for her patience, as I am a tough punctuator, lol. Go read her fiction; she is quite the story-teller! I appreciate the time and effort it takes for someone to beta, thank you lady!  
> I would like to offer this chapter in homage to catgirl26 for several reasons – but she knows the hell why. (>^ω^

**Like a Swan**

“Bulma?  You seem distracted; is anything wrong?”

                Her father’s voice cracked through the vines of thought that wrapped around her brain like a boa constrictor.  Dr. Briefs was staring up at her, one hand on the stack of readouts she’d held out, his brow furrowed with mild concern.  Bulma realized vaguely that her hand still clutched the readouts with intense ferocity, and that she was so far unwilling to let go.  Had she been seeing Vegeta’s soaked muscle shirt instead of the paperwork?  She jerked to life and released the calibration readouts she’d promised her father days ago.

                “Yes, I mean, no, Daddy, I’m fine.  Thank you.”  She paused, because Dr. Briefs’ expression of incredulity had not changed.  “I’m sorry about this; I couldn’t get the calculations to come out properly, and when I first opened up the mainframe the engine stalled entirely.”  She leaned on her father’s work desk and watched as he read over them.  He made a noise of questioning displeasure.

                “Perhaps the mainframe will need to be upgraded.  I hadn’t thought about how the new calibration would affect the capacity.  Isn’t that something you would usually catch though, my dear?”

                Bulma cringed; yes, it was something that her doctorate (one of three) in Applied Physics or her dual masters (two of three) in Mechanical and Computer Engineering should have been able to catch.  Even after printing the results and bringing them to the lab for her father, why hadn’t she thought of it?  For Kami’s sake, she’d gone over the calculations ten times and hadn’t thought about the fact that the mainframe couldn’t handle the new calibration.  She blinked a few times and shook her head.

                “I’m sorry, Daddy.  I should have been able to see it, I?”  She stopped and pushed away from the desk.  A few destroyed spar bots were lying on a table, and Bulma ground her teeth together.  “It’s been a long week,” she said finally.

                Dr. Briefs pushed his chair out and came to her side.  She was watching the bots as though one of them would get up and tell her exactly what was going on inside that gravity simulator.  After Vegeta’s abrupt departure nearly a week ago, after his wild and overwhelming assault that left her a shivering, wet mess, Bulma had crawled like a wounded animal into the GSR in his absence and overridden the bioStatus software so that the simulator would function without it.

At that moment, trembling against the coldness of her skin and the memory of his obvious, rock hard arousal still burning against her leg, Bulma had realized that nothing would stop him, and nothing would contain him.  Vegeta wasn’t just a ‘potentially homicidal, maniac alien,’ as Yamcha had so endearingly referred to him.  He was something else entirely, and so far she had been unable to figure out just how she was going to get into the Saiyan Prince’s head without getting herself burned.  Because now with the memory of his touch, violating and demanding as it had been, nothing seemed as simple as flirtation anymore.  Blessed Kaioshin, was she in over her head!

                “He’s an enigma, that one,” Dr. Briefs said suddenly, interrupting her brief reverie.  Bulma turned her head to her father and stared with parted lips.

                “Vegeta?”  She said his name with a measure of irritation.  “He wants to be the best and he’ll do anything to _be_ the best; that’s all there is to it.”

                “Is that all?” her father asked, not really to anyone in particular.  Bulma eyed him curiously; her father was not always so engaged by the plights of others.  “Oh, I think you’re right, Bulma.  I just don’t know if that’s the whole story.”

                She blinked.  Holy shit, he hadn’t _seen_ anything that night, had he?!

                “Daddy, I don’t know if you?”

                Dr. Briefs turned his head, ruffled lavender hair drooping down into his tired old eyes.  He smiled.

                “He seems like he would give anything, doesn’t it?  Like he would give anything to reach his ahh?  What do you call it, dear?”  Bulma relaxed quickly.

                “Super Saiyan.  Son-kun did it on Namek.”

                “Eeeh, right.  It seems he would do anything to reach it, even at the cost of his life.”

                Bulma huffed and patted at the headband next to her ear.  Her curls were the only thing keeping her roiling thoughts at bay as she stroked them away from her face.  She crossed both arms and approached the table full of spar bots.

                “He would, I think,” she said absently.  “He’d kill himself if it meant surpassing Son-kun; if it meant that for one moment he had been what he was meant to be.”

                Bulma realized, as her eyes rose from the mangled robots, that she had admitted to Vegeta’s madness without even realizing it.  Was it really what he was meant to be?  A Super Saiyan?  Kami, there weren’t even anymore Saiyans to dash themselves at his feet anymore.  Not only that, but the only other pure-blooded Saiyan alive hadn’t even realized he _was_ one until about four years ago; for all intents and purposes, Son-kun was a human.  And that was probably how Vegeta saw it, too.  Dr. Briefs had come to her side again.

                “I don’t know, Bulma,” he said, very quietly as though it were the biggest secret in West City.  “I’ve seen what happens to a living thing when it _wants_ to die.  Vegeta could’ve scorned his second chance at life.  But he hasn’t.  Even if he thinks he would die for his ahhh?”

                “ _Super Saiyan_ , Daddy,” Bulma said again, turning her head and smiling wanly.

                “Right,” he said in reply.  “Super Saiyan.  Even if he thinks he would die for it, he wouldn’t.  It’s just not in his eyes.  He wants it too badly.”

                “Hah!”  Bulma said, partly to contain the rush of emotion her father’s revelation had sparked in her.  “He wants it so badly so he can prove it: to everyone – to himself!”

                “Exactly.”  Dr. Briefs tapped his chin with one finger and approached the work table.  “Now, how can he prove it, if he’s dead?”

                For this, Bulma had no answer.  Her father reached out for one of the bots and picked up its stabilizer.  Somehow, the jumbled machinery on the table echoed the myriad thoughts that now danced through her mind, uninhibited.  The smell of machine grease assaulted her nostrils, but she merely wrinkled her nose at its familiar tang.

                “Do you think he wants to live so badly, Daddy?” she asked aloud, perhaps unintentionally.  _Lips pressed against hers in savage desire that bordered so closely with disdain.  Hands clutching at her with a lust that nearly resembled a repellent admission of respect…  That oppressive desire deep in her belly._

Dr. Briefs was watching her when he spoke again.

                “Oh yes, dear,” he replied.  “He wants to live; more than anything.”

                Bulma stared at the bots for another moment, marveling at the savagery that had torn them apart, and very suddenly everything her father said made perfect sense.  _This_ was what made Vegeta so mad with determination; so completely driven by his goal was he, that he thought he would die for it and yet—!  Yet, her father was right.  Everything about him:  his anger at the shutdown of the GSR, his utter glee at the chance for a verbal spar with her, the distrust apparent in his impossibly dark eyes whenever she came close of her own free will—even the sinful, handsome pleasure he seemed to gain from provoking her!  Yes.  All of these things belied the reckless self-abandon he so carefully flaunted.

                Vegeta had survived this long, and had even lapped up the opportunity of training to defeat the Androids with as much Saiyan gusto as ever.  In the rush of panic, planning and mechanical flurry that had followed that strange boy’s appearance, she’d almost forgotten how adamant Vegeta had been against her suggestion to seek out and destroy Dr. Gero.  He _wanted_ the challenge, and he _wanted_ to prove himself, probably more than anyone else in the known universe.

Why in Kami’s good name would he want to die now?  Up until now, all her assumptions about him had been wrong.  Though one thing still remained clear after her last encounter with him; he still needed to speak their language, and not just the words.  Maybe – maybe if he could, then she would see the thing inside him that still begged to live.  To _really_ live.

                “Daddy?”  Bulma said distractedly.  Her father, absorbed in the repair of a spar bot, glanced over at her quizzically.  “Daddy, I need to go do some research.”

                “Research, what—?  Bulma, I need you to complete the new calculations for the calibrator.”

                But she didn’t see her father’s look of consternation; she was already on her way out of the lab.  This alien man would not invade her working mind for one more second!  She was Bulma goddamned Briefs and NO one got the better of her.  One minute she was pinned against a Capsule spaceship by his groping and furious demands, a prisoner to the heat pressing into her, the next she was forgetting recalibration calculations that should be child’s play to a multiple-credentialed genius.

               If it was to live or to die, she would find out his motivation and get into his mind before he got any further into hers.

                Lusty abandon be damned.

 

#

 

                Out here in the middle of the sea, where the air was fresh and invigorating with salty moisture, while the waves crashed gently against the small island where Bulma now sat, one could almost believe that the world was ever at peace.  It was in stark contrast to the center of West City, where the Capsule Corp compound lay, and it seemed altogether a very different world.  Perhaps even another universe where the threat of the Androids seemed a distant possibility, and where no atrocity was even possible.  Bulma regarded the lush, tranquil scene around her and for a moment – just a moment – it was true.

                The palms surrounding Kame House swayed gently in the sea breeze and Bulma couldn’t help but smirk at the sight of Muten Roshi, snoring delicately as he lay prostrate on his favorite beach recliner, an appropriately censured porn magazine draped across his face.  He hadn’t changed a bit, and the sight of him made her nostalgic for times that seemed now another lifetime.

Bulma took a sip of the mai tai Krillin had graciously prepared for her, and pressed her own back against her chair.  She wriggled her bare toes in the warm sand and waited for Krillin’s answer to her question.  After a few more seconds of uncomfortable silence had passed, she lolled her head to the side and peered at him over her sunglasses.

                “Well?” she inquired.  The sun gleaming off of his head, and by contrast reflecting so poorly on his small nose, Krillin shifted uncomfortably in his seat across from her.  He pushed the bridge of his sunglasses higher up on that tiny proboscis.

                “Bulma, Vegeta wasn’t exactly the best conversationalist on Namek, ya’ know?  He mostly just grunted out orders and mocked our ‘pathetically low power-levels.’”

                “But you said he confessed quite a bit to Son-kun,” Bulma said irritably.  “You were _there_ , Krillin.  Tell me more about Saiyans, tell me about what he did to help you.  If you remember, I was left to fend for myself for a majority of the trip until Gohan and Piccolo took me back to Goku’s ship!”

                “Hey, I was dead at that point, ok?!  In pieces!”  Krillin had swallowed a hard swig of his own mai tai and made an explosive gesture with his free hand.  He then settled back into his chair and pushed his own toes into the sand.  “Vegeta was the last of his kind, Bulma…  He didn’t tell us much about Saiyans except for the whole ‘get beat to shit, recover and become more powerful’ spiel.”

                Bulma frowned in disapproval and flicked the tip of her straw in frustration.

                “He must have said something – done something that would explain the way he is, the reason he does what he does.”

                “Listen, Bulma, I know you think you’re trying to help him but you may as well forget it.  If being impaled through the heart by his most hated enemy didn’t change him, nothing you do to try and understand him will change what he is.”

“And what is that?” she asked, defiant.

“He’s a warrior, Bulma.  Different than Goku, though; he’s not just a fighter, he’s a killer.  It’s a wonder he’s lasted this long at Capsule Corp without managing to destroy something besides his simulator.”

Despite the truth in his words, Bulma chuckled into her drink at that; she’d related the “Incident” to Krillin when she’d first arrived and they’d taken to drinking cocktails by the water.  Roshi snorted and shifted in his chair over by the porch, muttered something about tits and threw a hand over his face, now left bare from the displaced magazine.  Bulma sighed in resignation and let her head sink into the chair.  The sound of waves crashing soothed the maelstrom in her mind, and the feel of soft, powdery white sand under her toes reminded her of being a teenager.  Being so naïve that not a trouble in the world could give her cause to worry…  

At least her trip hadn’t been a total waste.  And Krillin was fair enough company when one needed a good friend.  She blinked and looked at him.  He was staring at her with a guarded expression.

                “What?” she asked, removing her sunglasses.

                Krillin had put his mai tai on the small table between them.

                “I was there though.  When he died, I mean.  I saw Vegeta die.”

                The straw in Bulma’s drink floated errantly to the very top of her glass, and pushed against her upper lip.  She blew it away with a distracted _poof_ of air, and leaned forward in her chair.

                “You were there?” she reiterated, to be sure.  Krillin nodded slowly.  “Why didn’t you say so from the beginning?”

                “Because I just didn’t think it would matter, Bulma—”

                “You thought it wouldn’t ‘ _matter’_ , based on the questions I’ve been asking you?”  Her tone was flat, but she could feel the irritation creeping up her throat and tickling her vocal chords.  She would not screech today, she would not!  She took a shallow gulp of fresh sea air, just to keep the demons at bay, at least for now.

                “I said he was a killer.”  Krillin said, resolute.  “Nothing about his death changed that, at least in my mind.”

                “You said Frieza killed him,” Bulma remembered.  Krillin nodded and picked up his mai tai again.

                “Only after beating the bloody shit out of him first.  Kami…  I don’t even remember how long that part lasted.”

                Bulma sipped her drink and pondered these words.  After all she had seen Vegeta be capable of since his initial training had begun at Capsule Corp, it was difficult to imagine him being beaten bloody, even by the likes of Frieza.

                “If Frieza was more powerful,” she wondered aloud and gazed out to sea, “why didn’t he just kill Vegeta, instead of fighting him first?”

                Krillin was silent for a long moment, and when Bulma looked back at him she could see that his forehead had wrinkled underneath his sunglasses, and the six kyūjutsu dots there turned darker and more pronounced.  She waited, albeit impatiently, and took another very small sip of her drink.

                “You know he betrayed Frieza by helping us, Bulma,” Krillin explained, and then took a breath at her look of exasperation.  “But Vegeta was defying him long before that, and Frieza knew it.  The Saiyans and Frieza had some connection in the past, from what I could get out of it.  Some agreement.  While he was lying there, he…?

                When Krillin stopped again, Bulma could barely contain the beast.  If he thought he was sparing her with the gory details he was dead wrong.  It was the reason she came _here_ , it was the reason she couldn’t ask Son-kun about it!  She’d wanted to know why, now that Frieza was dead, Vegeta still couldn’t let go.  There was something he couldn’t let go of and the Saiyan Prince had built a wall around it: an impossibly strong work of masonry, brick by brick fashioned by his own hands.  Son-kun would never have revealed everything; he cared too much about her ‘sensitivities’ to risk it.  Krillin on the other hand—

                “Spit it out, shorty!” she snapped, startling the thoughtful monk with the barely contained witch voice.

He jumped in his chair, and the ice clinked around in his glass.  Roshi muttered in his sleep again and shifted to lie on his side.  A slow, loud and rolling noise detonated out of his shorts, until the last gasp of it crashed off the walls of Kame House the way a mortar shell may explode and echo.  The Turtle Hermit chuckled sleepily at the artistry of his gaseous eruption, and resumed snoring.  Krillin glared at Bulma from over the rim of his sunglasses, and she had a difficult time maintaining control of her expression as Krillin rolled his eyes at his old master.

                “Sweet Kami, Bulma!” he hissed, and relaxed back into his chair.  “You know how he is if you startle him; he’s three hundred thirty fucking years old!  Last time it was worse…  _Way_ worse, and I’m the only one here who can clean him up!”  Krillin pinched the low bridge of his small nose, and Bulma snorted in quiet hilarity.  In a moment he was again solemn.

“It’s just…” he began, hesitant.  “Vegeta spent a lifetime in service–no, slavery—to that monster and the only thing that mattered to him the whole time we were on Namek was that he be powerful enough to defeat Frieza.  While Vegeta was lying there, bleeding out through the hole in his chest, he _begged_ Goku to kill that white-skinned freak.  It was the most pitiable thing I’ve ever seen.  He said it _had_ to be a Saiyan, for all the humiliation brought on them—that it was destiny.  He was a gory heap, Bulma, but he still managed to do that one thing.

                “All I know is it must have taken a lot for him to say those things, for him to beg Goku, a warrior he despised with all his soul, if you remember.  I’ll never forget what it looked like, watching him do that… Watching his tears.”

                Bulma swallowed her mouthful of cocktail – hard.  Her throat convulsed with the image that Krillin’s words presented, suddenly quite vivid in her mind.  Vegeta’s… tears?  The concept seemed ludicrous; completely and utterly impossible.  She imagined his usual, handsomely stoic expression and regal nose cinched up with the strain of grief.  Even the thought of it was—well, it was heartrending.  Bulma was staring at her toes in the sand when the words finally came.

                “What was it like?” she asked Krillin, her voice far-away.

She could sense that the monk was looking at her, and probably with utter disapproval.  But she didn’t care.  All she could see was the image of Vegeta crying, sobbing his heart out with every bit of breath left in his collapsing lungs.  And, Bulma mused; who was there to hold him as he lay dying that day?  Who had ever been there?  Who was there for him now? 

“It was like watching an angry stray dog, Bulma,” Krillin said finally.  His tone brought her back to reality, and she glared back at him.  The monk stirred the ice in his glass, holding her gaze.  “I had a talk with Yamcha before he left for the desert.”

“I don’t like where this is going, Krillin,” she warned, suddenly angry that he had spoiled the conversation with talk of her estranged ex-boyfriend.

“Just don’t do anything that—?”

“That _what?”_   Bulma growled through her clenched teeth and squeezed her cocktail glass so hard that it shook.  “That would provoke Vegeta?”

“Just don’t tell him I told you all of this, ok?”  Krillin pleaded.  “Shit, he’d put another hole through my gut.”

“Ha!”  Bulma couldn’t help the note of sarcasm in her voice.  “I’m sure he has other things to keep him occupied now.”

When Krillin looked over at her, his newly removed sunglasses revealing his overly childish face, a bit of her evil screechy twin died down.  Her friend was nothing if not concerned for her welfare, and his bid for protection had only been an attempt at concealing that for her benefit.  After a moment or two more of calming silence, Bulma reached out to the table and put her drink down.  Roshi was awake now, and as he searched the sand underneath his beach chair for the abandoned porn mag, Bulma giggled.  When Krillin took notice his face loosened with amusement, and he shook his head.  He turned his attention back to Bulma.

“Look, Bulma, I know you pretty well, don’t I?”

She crossed a leg over the other and leaned forward, nodding.  They’d said enough about Vegeta today–about his death.  About his tears.  She blinked away any residual turmoil that still churned in her brain and smiled at Krillin.  
                “Pretty well,” she said finally.  Her friend grinned back and shook his head, then leaned back into his chair.

“Just don’t give him too much slack, ok?  I know how you are with lonely, brooding bad boys.  When you get right down to it, Vegeta’s still a menacing little asshole.” 

Bulma could not help the questioning lift of her brow, and Krillin was on to her before she even replied.  He groaned aloud at the humiliation of it.

“Little?”

 

#

 

This time she was waiting for him.  Bulma resolved to herself hours ago that she would never again be caught in the role of Vegeta’s evening entertainment.  She replayed the scene outside the GSR a hundred times in the corner of her mind; there were so many ways it could have ended differently.  The way he’d touched her, the way he’d kissed her–he could have had her right there in the torrential rain, against the rounded walls of Capsule 3 while she cried out to the thunderclouds and raked half-enraged scratches into his already marred skin.  Great Guardian Kami, what a slick bastard he’d been!  And she hadn’t even seen it coming.  No, not that night, she had not.

But she was glad she’d stopped him.  Yes, she was giddy even at the thought that she’d resisted such a challenge from him; because that’s what his furious assault on her had been, Bulma realized.  Somewhere in the depths of his mind, Vegeta saw her as a challenge.  Whether he realized that or not was another matter entirely.  Perhaps he even saw her as an intellectual equal, but well, she didn’t want him to get ahead of himself now, did she?

If she had learned anything from her conversation with Krillin, it was that Vegeta’s demons were too restless for him to leave any challenge without a fight.  But Krillin’s warning still echoed in her mind, and the short yet (surprisingly) introspective conversation she’d had with her father earlier that day was an element of this setup she could not ignore.

It was windy tonight.  It was so windy that, if she listened long enough, she could hear it buffeting against the rounded walls of the compound.  Bulma sat, comfortably perched on the bar stool at her kitchen island.  She shut her eyes in blissful satisfaction as she downed another heaping spoonful of butter pecan ice cream.  The full gallon container of it sat in front of her on the island like a trophy.  The lights inside the kitchen were dimmed by the computer to about forty percent, and she already felt like a woman on the edge of something very dangerous and exciting.  As if sitting in front of an entire gallon of her favorite ice cream weren’t enough, the idea that Vegeta would eventually come into the kitchen to find her was somehow both frightening and enticing.  Bulma licked an errant drip of ice cream from the corner of her mouth and shifted in her chair.

Earlier, during his usual meal time, Bulma had made her way surreptitiously out to the GSR to reengage the bioStatus and deactivate her override so that, were he to notice and shut it off or perhaps to injure himself in some way that gave the bioStatus software cause for alarm, the simulation would shut down.  Deductive reasoning told the blue-haired genius that one or the other would happen, and sooner rather than later.  Vegeta was also no fool; even if he did not injure himself tonight, he would notice that the bioStatus had been restarted and would probably be furious. 

 _Good,_ she thought.  _Good._   Vegeta was probably most handsome when he was furious.  A shiver of thrilling fear ran up her spine. 

Bulma drove another spoonful, laden to the absolute limit with ice cream, into her wide open mouth.  Shit, it felt good to be a pig sometimes – especially when one was celebrating such a well-thought-out act of courage as angering a half-psychotic, hot as hell alien prince.  She thought of her dear friend Krillin and his observation.  Kami, maybe she really did have a problem with lonely, brooding bad boys. She glanced at the clock above the kitchen door panels:  four a.m.

He’d been at it for some time tonight, she thought.  His usual quitting time was about three, coinciding with the end of her night’s work in the lab.  Tonight, after she’d completed the recalibration calculations for her poor, patient father, Bulma had literally skipped into the kitchen and had been sitting here gorging herself for nearly three quarters of an hour.  But the glow from the East Lawn still poured into the kitchen bay window, accompanied by the hum of the GSR’s systems, and despite that she’d been waiting so long, something about that glow assured her of one thing:  Vegeta was out there, pretending to be a martyr, and soon he would understand that she could see through this farce through and through.

As though it were dying, the GSR’s engine system hummed out a long and drawn out breath as it powered down.  The sudden loss of white noise split open the silence of the kitchen so completely that Bulma’s lips paused around the tip of her spoon.  The comforting glow from the window disappeared, and the lights of the night program bathed the kitchen in a wash of light sienna.  Bulma smiled and dipped the spoon into the softened ice cream.  She waited just as he had waited for her that night, begging her to rip the smirk off of his face with gusto.

The squeal and screech of metal contorting around itself brought her to immediate attention.  The asshole!  He’d ripped the door of Capsule 3 right off of its pistons!  Bulma shuddered with fury and wondered how long it would take her to reconstruct, and if it would all be worth it in the end.  She glanced furtively out the bay window to see him, in all his flame-haired glory and enrobed in a ki aura, approaching the compound on foot.  _Kami-sama!_ Why the hell was she doing this again?  Was it simply to get into the mind of a lost alien monarch who could, quite literally, kill her with a flick of his wrist?  Well, shit, it was too late to contemplate that now; he’d already entered the lab wing and was probably making his way up toward the residential area.  The wind howled outside and slid up the walls of the compound in tandem with his approach.

Bulma had long ago accepted that she would never be able to handle or wield her own ki, as her friends did, but she could _feel_ it.  It was an unmistakable sense of live, static essence.  Gathering ki made the air turn heavy with life force and, if it was powerful enough, it made the earth shudder and shake with its very movement.  That shaking, shuddering aura was headed right for her – right now.  In fact, as she dropped the spoon into the gallon of melting ice cream, she realized that it was right outside the kitchen door panels.

With delight Bulma watched as the doors slid open in an anti-climactic, ordinary motion.  Vegeta’s palm dropped from the control panel, and he stepped into the kitchen with controlled movement.  His aura had dissipated from the growling sphere she’d seen outside to a softly glowing, blue halo.  There was still sweat dripping from the sides of his face, soaking his hair line and parting the thick swath of hair in ripples against his skin.  His bare chest heaved with barely contained wrath.  Bulma swallowed the mouthful of ice cream in her mouth, and dragged the spoon through the remaining treat in front of her as she watched him.  As she casually brought another spoonful, now dripping rather than heaping, toward her mouth, his voice boomed into the kitchen with core-melting intensity.

“You turned it back on.”

She assumed he meant the bioScan.  Despite the trembling fear and treacherous anticipation that squirmed in her belly, Bulma shrugged.

“Of course I did,” she replied, and lapped the ice cream off of her spoon with childlike obstinacy.  “What did you expect me to do?”  She paused and grinned through the mouthful of creamy butter pecan.  “Did you expect me to give in?”

“I expected you to respect my wishes!”  Vegeta growled, still waiting stock still by the doors of the kitchen.

Bulma laughed aloud then, heedless of the remaining food in her mouth.

“But you don’t have to respect mine?”  She patted the voluminous bun of curls on top of her head and adjusted the headband near the top of her ear.  “It’s my machine, you know, Vegeta?  Mine and my father’s.  If you don’t want to play by the rules, I can pull the plug on it – no more demands or questions.”

“You won’t do that,” he said, and his voice had finally settled into a more playful rhythm.  It was more like the voice he’d used that night in the rain.

But Bulma would not let her burning legs fail her this time; she dropped the spoon into the now soupy froth of her treat and pushed herself off and away from her seat.  She stood straight, her back rigid and her neck extended and proud.  _Like a swan_ , she’d reminded herself.

“Won’t I?” she asked, proud that her voice did not shake.

The whole kitchen was awash in the bluish gray hue of his aura and though he could easily destroy the whole room with it, it remained as it was: simple and volatile at the same time.  Vegeta took a few steps forward this time, and Bulma felt the muscles in her legs begin to tremble.  _Shit…_ No!  No, he would not intimidate her like this, not just by coming closer.  Kami, how would she ever win this fight with him if she could barely approach him without turning to jelly as she had against the walls of the GSR?  His lips cracked into a characteristically vicious smirk, and his teeth glowed strangely in the mixed light of the kitchen.

“What is it you want from me, Earth Woman?” he asked her.  This time, the curiosity in his voice outweighed the fury–the wary irritation.  “You provoke me as if you _want_ something.”

Well, shit, how was she supposed to answer that?  Did she want something from him?  Probably.  Did she like provoking him?  Oh yes, without a doubt, and it solidified the challenge she’d wrought for herself weeks ago in the shower after Yamcha’s galling accusation.  But why?  _Whywhywhywhy_ — _?_

 Vegeta chuckled at her silence.  He actually chuckled, the prick.  And so, without a choice, without another course of action she stepped forward.  His mirth was losing this battle for her and the only thing that would stop his evil little sense of humor was her closeness; specifically, her _voluntary_ closeness, the kind she could initiate.  Because if there was one more thing she had gleaned from him thus far, it was that Vegeta did not like it when someone else was in control.  No, he _hated_ that.

Sure enough, as she came closer to him his body tensed like a stretched out coil spring from the door he’d just torn off the capsule.  Bulma felt the smile return to her lips with an unintentional sensuality.  She couldn’t get too carried away, could she?  Could she?

Vegeta crossed both arms over his bare chest, and she could actually see the muscles in his thighs bunch up under his shorts.  He stood with both feet shoulder width apart, and one of his thumbs peeked out from under his bicep to stroke the skin there.  Bulma took a deep breath and stopped about five feet from him.  His aura had not dissipated, and it tickled the fine hairs on her arms.

“What do I _want_ from you?” she asked, merely a re-statement.

She leaned an elbow against the kitchen island and regarded him from head to toe.  His eyebrow twitched with nervous inquiry; his bravado was failing just as it had when she’d approached him each time before this.  Bulma regarded her painted fingernails to distract him from her trembling voice.

“Yes, _Bulma_ ,” Vegeta snarled across from her.  It was the first time he’d used her name without being reminded of it, she noted with shock.  “What is it you want from me?”

Now he let his aura dissipate and, to her horror, he came to her so quickly that she had little time to do anything but back into the island.  Her heels hit the hard stone and she flinched, eeking out a girlish gasp of pain.  His face was so close to hers that she could feel his breathing, and his palms were flat against the countertop on either side of her.  _Shit.  Shit, shit, shit._ Had she lost all control now?  But _no!_   Bulma Briefs would get it back, goddammit.

“What do you want from me?!” he insisted, his voice grazing along the edges of control.

Bulma breathed deeply, taking a few seconds before each new breath so that they would not fail her.  She tightened the muscles in her arms, willing them to remain positioned and keep her precarious balance.  Her feet tensed on the ground, and a gust of wind outside drowned out the outburst of breath from Vegeta’s mouth.  Her mind, so close to the edge of abandon, came creeping back to her.

And so without a word, without a single shred of hesitation, she tilted her chin up and pressed her lips to his.  The contact of gorgeous, pliant heat against her mouth was so different than the kiss he’d consumed her with outside in the rain that her knees nearly buckled.  But Bulma kept them locked.  Kami help her, she would not let this defeat her!  In an instant though, he pulled his neck backward with a violent snap.  The heat was gone, and Bulma mourned its loss.  Vegeta watched her with narrowed eyes, and his breath was heavy against her face again.  His hands had not moved.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he asked.  Crass, she thought, but to the point.  Bulma lifted an eyebrow and frowned with confusion.

“It’s ok for you to kiss me then?  To grab me like a street walker and grope me, but it’s not ok for me to kiss you?”

“’Street walker?’” His voice was winded, and he was starting to back away, to look away.  Ah!  Did she have him now?

Bulma reached out with one hand for his neck, and her fingers slid over his sweat-soaked skin with ease.  They curled up into the coarse hair there, and suddenly the feel of his closeness was much more real than what she’d felt the first time.  Oooooh, Kami…  Her eyelids were low, so low with desire that she wanted to curse aloud.  Instead, the elation she felt at having regained her control made her giddy.

“It means ‘whore.’  ‘Prostitute?’  I think you know.”  She giggled; a silly sound that she hoped would show him how harmless she really was.

The column of his neck was so tight that she thought it may burst, so she stroked the tips of her fingers into the wet hair there.  Her words, her simple movements would have melted anyone else against her like the ice cream in the abandoned carton behind them.  And good _gods_ was it melting her resolve.  But Vegeta’s menacing glare returned and he pushed the entire length of his body against her, as he had done before.  It was not a kind, or even a sensual gesture.

“I don’t think you know exactly what you’re dealing with,” he told her with a low growl.

The thrill of fear she’d felt earlier returned.  But instead of deterring her, Bulma felt the fear turn into a disdainful kind of annoyance at his accusation.  She pushed back against him, glad to see that his ardor had returned and was pressing against her thigh with dizzying fire.

“Don’t I?”  She ground out through her teeth and pressed her fingers deeply into his wet flesh.  “You don’t know who I am, really; how can you say what I do and don’t know!”

Her voice ended in a shocking gasp as he reached a hand up to her neck and gripped it with enough force to hold her still, though he did not squeeze.  His thumb snaked under her chin and _pushed_ up until her throat was exposed and he was looking right into her eyes.  The black, so utterly black, irises in his wide eyes pierced into her so completely that she felt her legs start to burn again.  They shook under his dominating stance, and his free arm tensed next to her on the counter.  She heard the faint crack of tile, and could not help herself as she gasped for air.

“You don’t know who I am, either, _do you?_ ” he said, and then leaned into her ear.  “ _Do you?_ ”

Unable to do much else besides shake her head, Bulma croaked out an agreement.  Oh fucking hell, this had not gone as she’d planned.  Bulma’s ego struggled for the reigns again and she reached up to grip his wrist, the one that held her neck so tightly yet would not choke her.

“No…” she breathed against his check.  “No, I don’t.  But I do know _what_ you are.”

They grappled there for a moment, suspended in time as each rallied for control.  Her fingers dug into his neck and his grip tightened on hers, until another chuckle rumbled in his chest.  She felt it, pressed against hers and reverberating through her body until her fingers ached.  Vegeta, to her credit, was still breathless, and he pressed his cheek harder against hers.

“Oh, you do?”  His voice echoed in her ear.  “Then, what am I?”

The sound of his words sent shocks of uninhibited desire through her limbs.  She would not say it aloud, but Bulma did _not_ know what she was dealing with—because no one had ever wrestled her back for control.  No one had _ever_ challenged what she offered, not even Yamcha.  Poor, tamed and domesticated Yamcha…  The desire she felt for Vegeta at this moment could have broken the bandit’s heart though he was hundreds of miles away.

“Yes!” she hissed finally and slid her fingers further into the coarse, wet hair at his neck.  “I know what you are.  You’re a defeated, displaced prince who can’t admit when he’s cornered.  You don’t like being cornered, do you, Vegeta?”

Now this outright bravery surprised even her, and she felt a soft crow of joy at this small victory.  She stretched her other set of fingers out and touched them to the hard muscle on his chest.  But her victory was short-lived as he snarled and hooked his free arm around her waist.  The animalistic sound echoed in the kitchen, and he plucked her easily from her place against the counter until she was pressed, cheek into the wall near the dual stove.  Bulma slapped both palms against the wall and pushed back, but her bottom came in direct contact with his hips, and he shoved her forward again.

“No, I don’t like being cornered,” he said, and slid all five of his fingers into the messy bun of curls on top of her head.  He tugged until she was flush against his chest and he could snarl in her ear again.  “But neither do you, right?”

This time it was she who growled, but when her bottom pressed against the rock solid heat in his shorts, she let her breath out in a sigh.  No, no, no this was _not_ how it was supposed to go!  But she wanted it, without reservation!  She’d wanted it since the night in this same kitchen when he’d told her about his Saiyan word for ‘beautiful’.  Gods and guardians above, she was lost this time.

“No, I don’t either, Vegeta,” she told him, and leaned back into his fierce embrace.  “But I’m not afraid to let it happen.  _I’m not afraid of you_.”  She’d said the words before, and had meant them.  Did she mean them now?  She didn’t know.

Vegeta roared out a protest behind her and released the grip he’d had on her hair.  He took one shoulder and spun her around so she was facing him again, and through her haze of confusion, desire and disarming fear, she could really see him.  Oh, Kami, she could really see him.  His eyes begged her not to let him, but why?  He reached down to hook his fingers in her gym shorts and slid a palm up under her thin, pink shirt until he’d pushed her back against the wall.

His hand felt like a hot, cast iron pan against the plane of her stomach, and she gasped.  Bulma’s shorts fell to the floor, forgotten as he hooked her leg over his arm and lifted her off the floor with ease.  Her heart thudded wildly in her throat; dear Kaioshin, was it possible to be so on fire?  But this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen, it just _wasn’t!_   Vegeta’s fingers slid under her thigh and brushed along the seam of her panties, right between her legs where it was obvious now how much she wanted him.  He pushed aside the damp fabric and slid two fingers into her without pretense.  Bulma gasped at the sudden violation but shuddered at the wave of pleasure that shot through the center of her body, at the idea of what his hands had done for so many years—how many lives he’d ended with them.

Vegeta’s other hand slid further up her shirt to wrench down the top of her bra and cup one breast in his ferocious grip.  He pinched the already tingling nipple he found there unapologetically and she cried out in spite of herself.  She could see that he was pleased by that; the unadulterated satisfaction washed across his face like hot water.  His fingers pushed, hard, into her and he pressed his forehead against hers when she gasped with a mixture of pain and pleasure.

“Did that hurt?” he asked, his voice gruff and heavy.  When she did not answer, he huffed with breathless amusement.  “ _This_ is what I am!  And you still have no idea.  _No idea._ ”  She watched his eyes, so close to hers that they merged into one, and blinked at the strange and burning anger she saw there.

 _Wait…_ She wanted to say it so badly, but his relentless fingers worked their way out of her, and in again until she shook with the wanting of him.  She should tell him to wait— _this wasn’t how she wanted it!  He wasn’t speaking the same language yet!_   Oh, she understood his words all too well.  But it wasn’t the same, goddammit!  No, it wasn’t right.

But she rode against his hand uninhibited, on fire as she never had been by such a brash, unrepentant assault on her lust.  He knew what he was doing—but only as he knew how.  Vegeta gathered her shirt in his fist and tore it from her, heedless of her protest, then dipped his head to catch her exposed nipple in his teeth.  She shrieked and cursed the hands that dove into his hair of their own will.

With a swiftness that was nearly painful, he withdrew his fingers and pushed her further up the wall so that her other leg rested precariously on his hip.  Her eyes fluttered open, because she could sense that he was looking at her now.  Vegeta held her gaze for what seemed an eternity, and for the first time in those onyx depths, she could see a question.  No question that she could answer, but it was there nonetheless.  There she could see what her words had done to him; because he _was_ a defeated, displaced prince, and the desire to live she had been seeking from him was burning in his gaze like a torch.  Perhaps she could keep it aflame.

Bulma reached down to push his shorts off of his hips, suddenly frantic for this man—this alien man—who set her on fire with a mere glance.  It didn’t matter _how_ she wanted it now, because all she wanted was _him_ :  around her, against her, inside her.  Vegeta growled as she set him free, pushing forward until the back of her head hit the wall and she sucked in a breath.

He nudged into her carefully until he gasped and pressed his cheek against hers again.

“You’re a fool, you know that?” he snarled at her.  It was not really a question.  “ _Vash’halla_ …”  It sounded like a curse as he pushed further inside her, filling her up and bringing her panting breath to a hysterical, gasping keen.  “ _Fuck_ … You _should_ be afraid of me!”

So thankful for the vastness of her own home, Bulma let the cry of his name escape before she could stop it.  It seemed only to urge him on in his merciless quest as he slammed into her with an unfamiliar sort of ferocity.  It went on and on until the smack of his flesh against hers mingled with her gasps of delight.  _Good gods, how had it happened so quickly?  She hadn’t planned it this way, she hadn’t_ — _!_

The building tension between them now only served to take her to the point of climax so quickly that she felt like a trembling, terrified virgin.  Her legs squeezed him with a vicious need, and as she sobbed out her oncoming release and tugged on his hair, something else came to life in his body.  _Yes…_   She’d found that spark she’d been looking for.

“ _Yes, yes, yes!”_ For a moment she did not realize she’d been moaning the word out aloud.  But before she could grasp that spark from him, to really know it and hold on for dear life, it was gone.

Almost as quickly, Vegeta lost himself in her; he came with a deep and gratified groan and slammed one fist into the wall beside her head.  The plaster and fiber there cracked under the strike of his hand, and Bulma’s eyes snapped wide open so she could see the small little chasm of destruction he’d wrought.  It could have just as well been her head, she knew.

He pulled out of her quickly and let her panties slide back into place.  Bulma winced at the discomfort and loss of heat, and then watched him with indecision.  Kami save her, now what?  But Vegeta stood there, and the fist he’d planted into the wall relaxed.  He reached down to cup her bottom in that hand and _squeeze_.  She gasped at the sensation; she was still so very tender.  His other hand encircled her neck again, and he kissed her with the same gentle press of lips that she had shown him before.  Could he have understood at least that?

When they parted, Vegeta panted against her lips for a soundless moment and, to her great surprise, he smirked.  It was not a pleasant one, to be sure, but it did make the handsome lines of his face quirk with residual desire.

“You’re such a fool…” he whispered, and craned his neck to bury his face in her neck.  “A fool,” he said again, into her skin.  Was he telling her, or was he telling himself?

Bulma stood with the broken prince’s head on her neck, the two of them panting like teenagers in the back seat of a car, and she knew the truth of it.  She _was_ a damned fool.  Bulma gazed at the carton of ice cream on the counter, forgotten now and a mute testimony to how quickly a thing could change into something else entirely.


	7. Chapter Six - Starving

**Chapter Six – Starving**

                Here on Earth, even in the deepest parts of the night, there were moments when clouds all but obscured the brilliance of the heavens.  Those heavens:  thousands of stars dotting the endless expanse of universe that even Frieza, in all his galactic omniscience, had only begun to explore and conquer.  The part of Vegeta that had been so long in space mourned the loss of the clear field of black on a night like tonight.

Those bright stars; they had been the secret longings of a lost Saiyan child, and later of a vengeful, throne-less prince.  Perhaps one of them protected a distant planetary system where others of his kind had escaped the fate of Planet Vegeta.  Perhaps one day he would find them, and then together with his lost and loyal subjects they would reclaim the past glories of his forefathers.  But on these nights when the clouds were moving slowly over the bright, beautiful stars, Vegeta could not find the promise of so long ago.

From his place in a chair near the balcony, he looked away into the shadow of the Earth Woman’s room, clenched his fist and bowed his head to gaze at his bare feet.  The carpet was abnormally soft, and his toes tingled slightly at the unfamiliar sensation.  When Vegeta looked up again, he could see that sunlight was creeping over the horizon and that he would have no more hope of the stars tonight.  The woman’s figure on the expansive bed across the room stirred, turned onto her back and hummed a sort of contented tune until her breathing returned to a steady, deep rhythm.  Vegeta watched her intently.

_“You’re a defeated, displaced prince who can’t admit when he’s cornered!”_

 If not for the memory of her fingers sliding through his sweat-soaked hair and digging into him like little scalding hot pokers, well perhaps he would have killed her.  Yet there she lay, across the room and content in her soft bed, one bare breast only just revealed by the white sheets.  Worse, instead of killing her, he had fucked her twice more just as hard as he had in the kitchen and given up trying to reason why someone as spoiled and purportedly intelligent as she was would even _want_ someone like him.  What a complete and utter fool she was.

There were moments during that last time, with her lovely pale legs draped over his shoulders and his quick, powerful rhythm stoking the azure-haired hellcat’s ardor underneath him, when Vegeta could sense that although she’d wanted this from him, perhaps had even orchestrated it, it was not really what she needed.  She didn’t need—whatever the fuck it was he had just given her.

But _gods_ it had been so long since he’d even had the desire, or the opportunity, to pursue such outright self-gratification that instinct had taken over.  Instinct that, over and over, had driven him so deep inside her warm acceptance that it was the only thing worth having.  The only thing worth taking.  What a complete and utter fool _he_ had been: crying out himself like a rabid animal, clutching her hips and coming inside her with enough force to scare away any _normal_ female.

 _“Do it--!  Don’t stop, Vegeta!”_ she’d told him that last time, between cries of delight.  Her body arching off the bed to meet him…  _“You hold it all in—you hold it all in!”_

She was right of course.  If she knew how much he really held it in, she’d run screaming into the night.  Yet, watching her as he was now Vegeta could only press two fingers each against either side of his head and curse the twitch of his groin at the mere thought of her brazen and fearless assault on a warrior who, if he remembered correctly, had probably threatened to kill her on more than one occasion—and meant it.  He thought of her standing in the rain opposite him, her brow creased in a scowl rivaling his own while he imagined scraping his teeth over her wet, plump ass; he thought of her sitting casually in the kitchen with that utensil dangling from her fingers as though a planet purging, genocidal monster was not glaring at her in utter contempt for her meddling.

Vegeta sighed, blinked at her motionless form again and pressed his chin into his fist.  The dawn breeze drifted through her open balcony and danced a silent waltz with the curtains.  It was a feeling of comfort he was so very unused to, that it almost put him on edge.  How many times had he woken from stasis inside a cramped pod?  How many times had he woken in an overcrowded, shit excuse for a bunker?  Raditz would be snoring a scant few feet away or Nappa would be stinking up the precious space they had with his shameful hygiene.  He’d never seen a sunrise like the ones on Earth, and he didn’t remember the sunrise on Planet Vegeta.  No, not even if he sat and tried could he remember one of those.

He cursed, stood from his chair and swiped his shorts from their heap on the floor where he’d tossed them earlier, then slid them over his hips and carefully over his still sensitive cock with a hiss.  It had been about an hour and a half since they began by his reckoning, with little breathing time in between, but it felt like mere moments.  The sky was getting a bit brighter now, and he looked out the balcony window one last time.  The light drew him toward the edge of the plush carpet, where the tiles on the floor began and the sky was turning blue.  Vegeta found himself mesmerized by the sight, as he had so many times before, and leaned an arm against the edge of the doorway.  The balcony doors opened outward, like an invitation to join the sky in its golden, ferocious glory.  _Fucking_ Kakarot _and his golden, ferocious glory!_

Vegeta pushed away from the balcony door with enough force that it creaked and gave a little under the pressure of his hand.  He lifted his lip in a silent snarl and stalked over to the side of Bulma’s bed.  She lay there, for all the world having just been ravished by her most delicious fantasy, the upside of a delicate smile on her restful face.  As silent as a predator would be, Vegeta knelt on the floor beside her.  He exhaled, sighing out whatever frustration he felt at his indiscretion, and watched a few of her loose blue curls tickle the sides of her face.  What an utter, utter fool.  She really had no gods damned clue what she was really dealing with.

Vegeta reached out a hand to hover over her sleeping face, and paused.  His brow furrowed, and he brushed those wayward curls away from her neck and back onto the pillow so that they joined the halo of blue surrounding her—her and her veil of sickening naïveté.  He leaned forward until he could smell the contentment from her pulse point, and his lips lingered there without contact.  He drew in a breath and touched one finger to her parted lips; they were still wet and glistening.  She stirred just a bit and hummed in her sleep.

“Something will break this, Earth Woman,” he whispered to the rushing blood underneath her too-delicate skin.  “Something will break this, and you will hate me by the end of it.”

He _almost_ chuckled, because there was something distinctly unpleasant about that certainty.  Convinced of its inevitability though, and certain that there was little he could do about it, Vegeta stood and strode from the brightening room, his eyes focused on the door until it had slid shut behind him and he could not look back.

 

#

 

Bulma cursed, shrieked and sat up so she could fling her soldering tool away and plunge her forefinger into her mouth.  It was the third time she had burnt herself this afternoon, and not the first time she’d done it because her mind had been on other things besides repairing the busted pistons of the GSR entryway.  She plucked the digit from her mouth and cursed again.  Her eyes drifted upward at the realigned pistons; she hadn’t even started on the attachment of the door.  That would require the use of her father’s drone bots.  An angry Saiyan had plucked its hinges off with little effort, but not even absentee Yamcha would be able to lift the door and Bulma had cringed at the thought of hitting up Son-kun for such a task.  That would certainly have required something of an explanation, and Bulma was running dreadfully low on those.

She stood, pleased with the work she’d completed, and let the summer breeze cool the sweat from her neck.  The muscles in her thighs screamed at her efforts, and she grunted in discomfort.  It had been two days since her encounter with Vegeta and her body still protested the slightest strain, especially in her legs and bottom.  She’d held on tight for the ride, enjoyed every moment of it, and even now the remnant soreness made her equally giddy and irritable at the same time.

Surely Bulma’s giddiness stemmed from her victory.  She’d actually done it, for Kami’s sake.  Somehow, and even now she was not sure _exactly_ how, she had wormed her way into the dark mind of the Saiyan Prince and managed to awaken _something_ in him; but even now, even having let him inside her, so much remained a mystery.  The tears Krillin had mentioned during her visit to Kame house, the unknown and perhaps perpetually unreachable parts of his past that only Son-kun and his allies had been privy to for a short while; all these things were still so far from her grasp that it only fueled her desire to attain them.  His words that night, as few as they had been, had done nothing to answer the burning questions in her mind or scratch the itch of her curiosity where he was concerned.

 _“You’re such a fool,”_ he’d said.  _“_ This _is what I am!”_   And she remembered the way his hands, his fingers, had made her feel like bursting into pieces—the way he’d filled her up to the very limits of her endurance, and she’d _let_ him.  Shit, she’d loved it.  _Damn him…_

Ah, yes, her irritation; it was a direct result of his absence in the past two days.  Bulma was resolute in her determination that the urgent, slightly vicious fuck-fest she’d allowed herself to indulge in would _not_ be the last word she had with Vegeta, regardless if he ever touched her again, and in spite of her desire for him to do just that.  Grudgingly her aching legs trembled at the thought of it, and she growled aloud at the shiny pistons she’d just soldered back together.

“You can put the door back on yourself, asshole,” she snapped at the empty air around her.  It was humid today, and bloody hell was it hot.  She sighed through pursed lips and wiped a bit of grease and sweat from her brow with the back of her hand.  Bulma cursed when she realized her hands were equally as dirty.

As she began to gather her tools and think longingly about a cool, delightful shower, the air suddenly became heavier.  Impossibly, it seemed even harder to breathe.  That scent was back, she realized with a slow and nervous _aha!_   The one from the kitchen the night she had first put her hands on him, and he had nearly throttled her in the process.  _Oh, shit_.

“You are brave to the point of stupidity, Earth Woman: even when you think no one is watching.”

His voice wafted through the heavy air from around the right wall of the GSR.  It sent trickles of mixed emotion inching down her back, just like the snaking fingers of sweat that itched at her skin.  Bulma’s eyes narrowed and she glanced around the curved wall to see him standing there, leaning up against the GSR with one foot propped against it.  His arms, crossed over the broad expanse of his chest, tightened when he saw that she had found him.

  Bulma blinked at him, unable to fathom how a man, even one so alien as he, could possibly look so solitary and distant.  She recalled that he believed he’d done a fairly good job of being just that up until now, but the memory of his persistent and all but needful love-making (if one could call it that) revealed that he needed so much more than that: more than he even knew.  The knowledge of that made her daring, and despite that she could still feel the heavy air on her skin and smell the tinge of whatever small part of him still wanted to keep her away, she came to him.  Vegeta watched her approach with the same wariness as always, eyes wide so he could observe her every movement.  As though she posed him some threat, some—injury.

The grass was cool, despite the hot afternoon, and Bulma let it tickle her ankles for a moment before she inhaled deeply and closed the distance between them to inches.  He did not move, but continued to watch her with a gaze so penetrating that it burned.  His body, so close, was as far away from her as it had been before that night.

“Still can’t say my name, Vegeta?” she asked, noting how the air around him was even hotter.  She looked him up and down, wondering how god-awful she looked in her coveralls and grease-smeared face.  “Still can’t say ‘ _Bulma’_?  It’s just my name, you know.”

Kami save her, he finally blinked, and his eyes narrowed.  Vegeta’s arms shifted against the blue sleeveless shirt he wore; clearly he had been back to Capsule Corp even in the two days she had not seen him.  The clothes smelled fresh, and she saw with some surprise that although he wore a pair of loose gym pants, his feet were bare.

“You’ve no concept,” he said finally, “of how infrequently I have addressed a female by her name.”

Bulma felt the scornful chuckle rise up her throat before she could stop it.  She almost gulped it back down, but the memory of his shameful two-day avoidance urged her on.

“Even the ones you’ve fucked, hmm?” she hissed, right on the edge of a lustful little sneer.

Oh, balls, she hadn’t meant for it to come out that way and his eyes narrowed even further at the candor of her voice.  _Classic, Briefs,_ she mourned.  As if the Prince of All Lost Souls from the depths of Space Hell was going to respond well to such an Earthly, piss of a retort as that.  Bulma ground her teeth together, and her nostrils flared involuntarily when he leaned closer.  The sound of his shirt sliding across the wall of the GSR mingled with the rush of cicada song in the trees, and the corner of his mouth turned up.  She could just barely feel the tip of his nose against hers.

“Why can’t you admit that you don’t know what you’re dealing with this time, _Bulma?_ ” he whispered.  The sound reverberated against the wall, into her ears and down into the deepest core of her belly: that part where only a gut reaction would come from.

“Because I’m _fucking smart_ , that’s why,” she snapped and caught his deep, dark gaze over the bridge of his nose.  “You’re no different from--!”

Vegeta stepped back a few inches and laughed aloud.  It was that same laugh from the night in the kitchen when the sound had sent a shockwave of desire through her that was as outrageous as it was delightful.  But this time Bulma felt his laughter right in the center of her chest, where her ego had just been sucker punched.

“No different from _what_ , Earth Woman?” he said; it was not really a question.  “From your dear friend, Son Goku?  I am like nothing, no one you’ve ever met before!  You think to compare me to Kakarot, or that that fool who thinks he stands a chance against the Androids when even that half-breed brat Gohan could show him up?”

“Yamcha is not a fool, he--!”

“Am I no different from any other poor choice you’ve made, Bulma?  Is that why you think you understand me?”

At this the characteristic gusto and self-assurance in her dropped to the floor with her bruised ego.  She stood stock still in front of him and for the first time, in any of the possible parallel universes that made up the fabric of time as she’d studied it, Bulma Briefs felt tears of frustration well in her big blue eyes.  A poor choice was it?

A wave of raging embarrassment washed over her, and instinct lifted her right arm into the air, palm flat out to make direct contact with his handsome, smirking face.  But she _had_ forgotten who she was dealing with, hadn’t she?  Vegeta’s hand snapped out from his side to catch hers mid-air.  After he glanced at it, and wrapped bare fingers around her wrist, he let out a short breath of air.

“Oh-ho!  You almost surprised me, Earth Woman.  I had thought your only means of attack was your lovely, vicious mouth--?”

He stopped when one belligerent tear slipped from her eye.  _Fuck!  No!_   No, it would not do for him to see such a thing!  But it was there now, and there was no denying the trail of clear skin it left on her grease-stained cheek.  To her great surprise the smirk died on his face, and something about his aura changed.  A gust of wind rushed by; he had just let his guard down, Bulma knew that trademark quite well.  But why?  A distant, unfamiliar glaze brushed over his black eyes, and his lips parted wordlessly.  Vegeta’s fingers brushed upwards against the inside of her palm, and his grip tightened.

Bulma gathered her bearings, because it would not do to lose her god-damned cool in front of the haughtiest being in the known universe.  Because she was _fucking Bulma Briefs_ , and because she was just as determined as he was.

“All you can do is hurt,” she said finally.  “Why?”  His eyes, though focused at hers, seemed to look past them into something—somewhere?—else.

“Why not?” he replied, resolute. 

“Because it’s not all you’re capable of!”  Bulma leaned forward so that their noses were almost touching again.  Vegeta’s eyes snapped back from the haze of whatever time or place he had been, and his ever-present scowl deepened.

“I can prove you wrong about that.  Right now.”

Bulma shook her head, swallowing down the rest of her wayward and disobedient tears.  The one on her cheek had dried.

“You can’t prove me wrong,” she said, and slid her wrist from his grasp.  He did not stop her, only held her gaze with dizzying concentration.  Bulma opened her mouth and drew in a shaky breath.  “I already know how good you can make me feel.”

A brief moment passed while Vegeta seemed to absorb her words, and the truth of them kept him silent for that oh, so quiet piece of time.  But then Vegeta snarled, he gripped both sides of her face and spun her around until her back was up against the wall of the GSR, just like that night in the rain.  He still couldn’t stand to lose his control over _anything._  

Bulma struggled futilely for a few seconds until she realized that even now he was not hurting her; even now when the rage on his face was bright and hot as the summer sunlight around them, his hands did nothing but turn her insides to traitorous, eager mush.  She watched him simmer until the gushing wind returned and his aura began to rise again.

“You know _nothing!_ ” he snarled, and a crackle of ki around his eyes startled her into submission.  “You know nothing if you think what we did was _good_ in any sense of the word.”

Bulma put both of her hands on top of his; the ki shock had frightened her enough this time that she wanted to remind him she was still there.  He glared down his regal nose at her and loosened his hold only a bit.

“Vegeta,” she managed, “when you touched me, it felt good.  Didn’t you feel good, too--?”

“Stop it!” he raged, “You know what I meant.  No matter how ‘good’ it felt, what happens when you do find out what you’ve gotten yourself into?  What _is_ it that you want from me and just what in the name of all the gods do you think I can give you?  Have you completely forgotten just who the fuck I AM?”

“Let go of me, damn you,” Bulma growled under his fingers.  When he finally did release her, none of his aura had dissipated, and it was slowly gathering momentum around them.  Her skin tingled with its bio-electricity.  She clenched her fists at her sides and pressed her lips together before opening them to gasp in a breath.

“So what exactly is it that I’ve gotten myself _into_?  Yes, yes, you’re Vegeta, Crown Prince of All Saiyans and the craziest fuckwad known to Planet Earth since Emperor Nero!  If you want to, Vegeta, burn West City to the ground and me with it!  It won’t change anything about what happened between us, and it _won’t_ change what I want from you or what you want from me!  It was only that we wanted _each other_ , Vegeta.  Is that too simple for you to fathom?”

“Great _gods_ you are a fool!” he shouted at her, and Bulma realized vaguely that outside the storm of his ki the sun was shining.  It was like suffocating in a tornado, with every word from his mouth a strike of agonizing lightning.  She glared at him and pressed her face forward until their noses touched again; a stinging little shock crackled between them.  Bulma snarled.

“A fool who can say she doesn’t care where it goes from here, if it ends or how it ends!  A fool who saw what you needed and gave it to you, you conceited prick!” she shouted above the din of his ki storm.  “Now power down before you singe my god damned hair!”

Seconds passed as they stared at one another, and Bulma found herself mesmerized by the pulsating force of Vegeta’s energy.  She had never been so close to Son-kun as he prepared to fight; had never been so completely devoured by the rushing life force that flurried around her now with a dark and fiery insistence.  He watched her with obvious disdain, then a flash of admiration.  Then, just before he sighed and his eyes slid shut with the effort of controlling his ki, Bulma saw Vegeta’s spark again: that spark of desire for life and all it promised him that she had so desperately been searching for.  His head leaned back just so, and he paused.

Bulma felt the ki dissipate, and again the rush of wind as his guard dropped.  The summer was heavy and silent around them until the cicadas came back to life in the trees, and a few birds returned to chatter about as though trying to discern what had disrupted the tranquil afternoon.  Vegeta’s eyes opened, and he looked at her.  Again though, something in his gaze was very far away.  He leaned forward and pressed both palms flat against the GSR on either side of her head; he was searching now, some place deeper than where her eyes could take him.

“What I need?” he said then, deep and quiet: dangerous.  Though her tears were gone now, the quake and shudder of her body was not.  “You think you know what I need, do you?”

Bulma sucked in a breath at the sudden rush of slight panic in her chest.  She swallowed it and blinked at him, and then she nodded.

“Maybe I know better than you do,” she whispered.  “You fuck like it’s the last chance you’ll ever get.”

Vegeta’s arms tightened as the weight of the GSR shifted under his powerful arms.  Bulma slid forward as her bearings were lost, and the sound of his sudden, thunderous voice all but drowned out the remaining snide retorts she’d been hoarding since his unexplained disappearance.  She dropped to a squat in the grass, reflexively shutting her eyes and covering her ears.  Oh _Kami_ , it was different this time, she thought.  His voice was so _different_.

 Something old and horrible came gushing from his throat now and though he was angry, Bulma heard something of sorrow in his roar.  When it stopped, he spat a few choice words she did not understand and stood in front of her panting.  Bulma’s eyes winked open and she squinted up at him, against the sunlight.  Though it seemed that there should be some destruction wrought by his generous tantrum, there was no sign of it but for the approximate four-foot shift of the GSR behind her.  Bulma took a few deep breaths to watch him; he gazed skyward and let loose the fists at his sides.  She shook her head and felt the words escaping her before she had a chance to stop them.  Great Kaioshin, she’d already said enough, hadn’t she?

“Look at you,” she said finally, against the hum of the summer insects.  “I think _you_ are the one who’s afraid, Vegeta.”  Bulma planted both hands in the cool, damp grass and stood shakily.  After she had brushed some leaves and debris from her coveralls, she saw that he was looking at her with distinct, furious shock.

Now, in the shadow of the GSR, the angle of his face and the deep ‘v’ of his brow were so well-pronounced that he had never looked so handsome: and never so very wretched.  Bulma thought for a moment, about the alien warrior she had seen when he’d arrived on Earth, and the one in front of her who looked so much like a human man, _felt_ so much like a man, that she had forgotten his true nature entirely.  Vegeta was still staring at her, his left eyebrow raised, and she swiped a hand across her greasy face one more time.

“Afraid?” he repeated the word with so much disgust that she shuddered.  But then, he took one step closer to her and craned his neck forward.  “Yes… Yes I’m afraid; but not of you, precious little thing.  So naïve, so oblivious to the evil in this universe.”

Bulma puffed out her chest indignantly at his derision.  The bastard!  Did he think she’d forgotten?  Did he presume that his sins had gone unpunished, though he had been given a second chance at life?  Though she had given him a second chance?

“I’ve seen enough of evil in this universe,” she said. “I know what’s out there.  I know what’s right under my roof.”

Vegeta chuckled his ridiculously handsome, spirited chuckle that she did enjoy so horribly much, and he reached out to brush his fingers against her hair.  Bulma snapped her face away from his advance, though the skin on her neck burned where he would have touched her.  He smirked again, flashing a canine.

“What’s in your bed?” he hissed, so gently that it could have been a whisper.

Her eyes narrowed into little slits at the flash of memory: of tangled limbs and a strong grip on her legs, fingers probing her until she was left a shivering mess against the wall of the kitchen, joined for the moment to the cock of the most unstable, dangerous creature on Planet Earth.  The fire in her belly begged for that feeling again, for the frightening urgency she had seen in him.  ‘This _is what I am!_ ’

But Bulma nodded to him.

“Yes, Vegeta,” she said, her voice clear and decisive.  “Yes, I know.  You want me to understand you, but you need to understand me, too, for that to happen.”

“Hah!”  His voice rang out into the open space, and his hand dropped back to his side.  “I know what I need to know about you.”

Bulma felt a tendril of a frizzy curl fall into her face, and she allowed herself a small smile.  As she stepped away and bent to pick up her remaining tools, she could feel more than see the curious glare His Royal Highness had bestowed upon her.  Despite the pull, the magnetic force of his aura and the desire that rushed to fire between her legs at the thought of his powerful and urgent lust, Bulma readied herself.

She did not look back when she slung her tool sack over her shoulder and adjusted the waist of her coveralls, but she did pause.  She could feel the licking tongues of flame from Vegeta’s glare behind her, but she pressed on.   _One foot in front of the other, Briefs.  Do this—do it!_

“Let me know when you discover empathy, Vegeta,” she called over her shoulder to him.  “Oh, and like I said; you can put the door back on yourself.  Asshole.”

 

#

 

“Miss Bulma, you ought to see how much stronger I’ve gotten!  My father and I’ve been training with Mr. Piccolo for months now.”

Gohan’s beautiful, innocent face gazed up at her with impatient respect.  He had shown up with his father just moments ago, inside the west compound of Capsule Corp where they were literally half a mile from the GSR location, and had been touting the training progress he’d made with his father ever since.  His eager, eight-year-old face was so very similar, and yet so very different from any other boy that Bulma gave pause.  Then, Gohan was not just an average eight-year-old boy at all; he was half-Saiyan, half beastly warrior breed, and she’d seen that perfectly well on Namek.  Bulma smiled at his naïve eagerness and crouched to the boy’s eye-level.

“You’ll have to show me, Gohan.  In a bit though, alright?”

The youngest member of the Son family nodded, his bright eyes such a jarring contrast to the dark and brooding pair she’d been staring at mere hours ago.  Gohan reached up with a curious tilt of his head and touched the silky, newly blown-out locks of her straight hair.  She’d only just returned from the salon half an hour ago.  So far it was much longer than she intended it to be, her curls having gotten out of hand these past months, and reached past her shoulders down the hollow between her shoulder blades.  It tickled the bare skin there around her tank top.

“Your hair looks different,” Gohan stated, his brow creased with a childish concern.  But his brow lifted then, as though he had been contemplating something.  “You look beautiful Miss Bulma!”

Bulma smiled warmly at him; it was the most wonderful thing she’d heard all week.  She reached out to ruffle the unruly, black Saiyan hair on his head.  He squinted and laughed.

“Thanks, kid,” she told him, and he continued to gaze at her with innocent wonder.

Looking at Gohan, one would never guess that the terror that boy from the future had warned them about was now less than two and a half years away.  A soft noise at the entryway made Bulma blink, and she gazed up into the pre-evening sunset to see a familiar silhouette.

“You do look beautiful, ‘Miss’ Bulma,” Goku said, the never-absent and playful lilt of his voice so very uplifting.  Bulma stood and did not think to thank him as she threw an arm over his high, broad shoulders.

“Son-kun,” she said, nearly a whisper, and closed her eyes.  Her friend’s strong arms wrapped around her, and his palm pressed against her back with a platonic and comforting squeeze.  “I’m so glad you’ve come.”

When they parted, Goku grinned happily and planted both hands on his hips.

“It hasn’t been as long as it usually is, huh?” he joked.  The two shared a chuckle as Gohan glanced eagerly around the foyer of the west compound, Capsule Corp’s corporate offices.  Bulma watched him and longed for his oblivious fascination.

“Why don’t you take a look around, Gohan?  This is our display room.”  The demi-Saiyan nodded with glee and rushed up to a hover plane prototype from the early days of her father’s manufacturing business.  Bulma looked back up at Goku.

“Sorry about the formal location.  Vegeta’s been in the GSR since the afternoon and I didn’t want to cause any…?”  She paused, thought heavily on her words and mimicked his pose.  Her friend laughed softly enough to keep Gohan’s attention away from him.

“It’s ok, Bulma,” he said; the smile only he could smile was just too sweet.  “Anyway, he already knows I’m here.”

Bulma huffed and crossed both arms over her purple tank.  She hadn’t even considered it.

“I should have known that,” she confessed.  “I was just hoping to spare you his ego.”

Goku lifted a hand to scratch at the back of his head with confusion.  There were times when he still looked so…  So young.  It seemed only months ago that they had scoured jungle, desert and plain together in search of Dragon Balls, not _years_.  Son-kun’s mouth turned up at the corner.

“Vegeta isn’t the type to let anyone be spared from _that_ ,” he replied, still looking a bit confused.  Bulma laughed though, and reveled in the relief it sent through her chest.  She had hoped, from the moment she’d phoned her friend, that nothing would seem out of place or _wrong_ , despite her current state of mind.

“But I thought you said the GSR door was broken,” Goku continued, and his hands returned to his hips, “and that Vegeta had been gone from Capsule Corp for two days.  I did feel his ki move away for a little while.”

Bulma sighed and lifted her brow in haughty frustration.

“Yes, well,” she began quietly.  “He replaced the door himself; in fact, I told him to do it himself.  I just didn’t expect him to, Son-kun.  That’s why I asked you to come, but by the time I realized he’d already done it I figured you were already just about here.  And anyway, I--?”

Goku’s eyes blinked wide at her pause, and it looked as though he expected her to say more.  Much more.  Bulma squinted at him.  Great fucking Kami.  Did he know?  How _could_ he know?  There was no way unless his heightened Saiyan senses could smell something on her, and holy Kaioshin maybe that’s what it was!  Son-kun was so like a human, raised as one, had assumed life as one and it was only recently that Bulma (along with the rest of their small social cluster) had discovered that he was indeed _not_ one of them.  _Piss and corruption!_   She hoped against hope that his look of questioning anticipation meant nothing more than a genuine concern.  Bulma reached out to put a hand on his arm, and when it then slid down he caught it in his strong fingers.

“Anyway, it’s so good to see you, Son-kun.” 

He squeezed her hand and smiled boyishly.

“You too, Bulma,” he replied, his radiant smile so reassuring that she forgot about the brooding Saiyan Prince for just a moment.

“C’mon in, sit with me!  It’s been ages since we ate together!”

After Gohan had finished ogling the multiple exhibits in the foyer, Bulma lead them to the guest sunroom and paged her mother over the intercom.  Within minutes a veritable heap of hors d’oeuvres arrived via several servo bots, and Mrs. Briefs came strutting in behind them, a lovely white sundress trailing softly behind her ageless bottom.  She carried a tray filled with some very thick sandwiches, and giggled pleasantly at the grins of enthusiasm on the faces of Son-kun and his eight-year-old.  They were nearly identical.

They ate and talked, through stuffed mouths, for a solid three hours.  Bulma couldn’t remember the last time Son-kun had been so long in her company, and wondered vaguely how he’d actually managed to get Gohan away from ChiChi for today. 

“Listen, I don’t think I ever apologized for stealing your panties,” Goku said later, quietly but with the same mischievous glint in his sweet eyes.  He sat on the wicker loveseat opposite her, looking up at the stars through the skylight.  Despite the very warm day, the evening had turned a bit chilly and Bulma had already closed most of the windows in the sunroom to a crack.  Gohan was out cold on the seat next to Son-kun, and breathed quite deeply.

Bulma stared at him for a moment before bursting into a fit of chortling against the cool skin of her arm.  Goku pressed a relaxed fist against his mouth and grinned unabashedly.

“Can you look at me now and honestly say you had no idea what you were doing?” Bulma inquired, her voice the closest to happy hysteria it had been for a long time.  “I mean you were, what?  Eleven, twelve?  You HAD to understand what they were there for.”

Goku shook his head and wagged a finger at her.

“You forget where I grew up, _Miss_ Bulma,” he teased, “really and truly; I’d never even imagined that girls were any different than boys.  My Grandpa didn’t really talk about… things like that.”

They both dissolved into laughter again, but Gohan slept on, oblivious.  Bulma tilted back into her seat and gripped both knees the way a young girl may.

“I believe you,” she said, her mirth dying into a genuine acquiescence.  “I forgive you.”

Son-kun’s laughter slowed, and for a moment he seemed almost regretful.  His smile held a sad, but quite resolute kind of warmth.  Bulma tilted her head to the side, let her legs slide back down in front of her, and was about to ask him why.  Why the sad smile, Son-kun?  The boy, the man she knew never smiled like that.  But her mother had slid quietly into the sunroom.

Mrs. Briefs cleared away some trays and made a soft noise of approval at the sleeping Gohan.  She reached down to tuck a wayward lock of thick hair behind his ear, and then she brought a hand to her mouth. 

“I just thought!” she exclaimed quietly, so as not to wake the sleeping child.  Mrs. Briefs turned to Bulma, who had just finished off a lovely lemon bar from its wax wrapper, and blinked.  “My goodness, there’s nothing left for poor Vegeta.  I’ll have the servos make sure there is something for him.  Of course he won’t eat it until late tonight, don’t you think so, Bulma?”

Bulma gazed at her mother incredulously, finding herself at a loss for words.  In the resulting silence, Son-kun began patting his stomach.  Bulma was drawn to the sound, as it was the only thing saving her from having to comment at all on Vegeta’s nocturnal habits.  It was also the only thing that made her forget his sad smile.

“Mrs. Briefs, this was just wonderful.  Thank you!” Son-kun, clever as always underneath his naïve façade, rubbed his belly and winked at Bulma’s mother.

“Oh, Son-kuuuun!” she mewled and tossed a hand at him, giving Bulma a chance to recover from the unexpected embarrassment she’d experienced at her mother’s words.  Really… The whole situation was making her quite paranoid around friends and family.  Kami save her, she felt like Vegeta.

After a few more words of thanks and gratitude, Bulma’s mother left through the sliding doors to the servo kitchen.  When the quiet again settled over the three in the sunroom, Goku shifted in his seat and reclined further into the couch.  The wicker creaked loudly in the high-ceiling of the sunroom, and Bulma’s wide stare caught his.  She looked away.

“Don’t worry about Gohan,” Son-kun said amusedly.  “He sleeps through just about anything.”

Bulma nodded to him, her mind horribly absent from the room.  It was somewhere up in the ceiling, floating out towards the east compound… To the residential wing… her bedroom.

“Bulma?”  Son-kun’s voice snapped her out of the tumultuous reverie in her mind.  When her eyes found his again, Goku’s brow creased gently.  It was not a look of concern, or even of disapproval; but that was why she loved him like a brother, wasn’t it?

“Son-kun?”  Her voice was thin, like a scrap of tissue.  A flurry of butterflies tickled inside her belly.

 “How is it, Bulma?” Goku asked, and on the edges of a laugh, “I mean, with Vegeta here?  You didn’t know what you were getting into, huh?”

Bulma felt her eyes widen and her lips part of their own free will.  She laughed heartily at this description of her Saiyan houseguest, and clapped both hands over her mouth, despite Son-kun’s reassurance.  Her friend chuckled generously at her reaction and reached back to scratch his head again.  His black, so black hair reflected even the dim lighting of the sunroom, and Bulma took a great _gulp_ of air.

“That’s an understatement,” she quipped bitterly.  There was a moment of silence, heavy with unspoken words, until Bulma pushed away the walls of silence.  “It’s ok, Son-kun.  It’s ok, you know?  He’s…  He doesn’t say much.”  She stopped on the last word, remembering indeed how little he had actually said, but how much he could communicate with a mere glance—or a touch.

Bulma leaned forward on her elbows and attempted the most convincing nonchalance as was possible.  She shrugged and watched Goku’s brow crease again.

“I’ve tried Son-kun.  I really have, but he isn’t quite used to life here.  I don’t know how else to make him feel,” she paused, unsure, but with no other explanation available to her, she said, “at home.”

Without taking his eyes off of her, Goku reached down to lay one big hand on Gohan’s head.  The child stirred, but continued to sleep as though no threat in the world could cause him any harm.  As long as his father’s hand lay just where it was now…  Goku breathed in deeply.

“Bulma, I don’t think he’s ever spent this much time in one place,” he said thoughtfully, his mouth set in an atypical frown.  Her lips pressed together before he continued.  Son-kun leaned further back in the wicker chair.  “After he left Planet Vegeta, he didn’t have a home.  At least, that’s what I know.”

Bulma’s mouth, drier than a sack of sand, hung open just far enough to allow an audible intake of breath.  Great Kami!  Would she be able to understand something else if she prodded Goku further?  Could there be _something_ that would explain her dangerously obsessive curiosity, her sick satisfaction at having seduced a gorgeously aloof, alien sociopath?

“What else do you know, Son-kun?” Bulma ventured, noting that he had gone back to staring into his lap.

His eyes lifted, and in them she was reminded of the other-worldly golden glow she saw emanating from her childhood friend.  _What else did he know?_ His eyes danced for a moment, and he smiled knowingly.

“I know that inside of him, there is a great power that he can’t reach: maybe even greater than mine.  He knows it too, Bulma, but he doesn’t know why.”

“Do you?”  The words were out before she had a chance to stop them, but Son-kun’s expression did not change.  His hand continued to stroke Gohan’s hair.

“Because he can’t let go, Bulma.”  Goku lifted his other finger at her, pressed it to his forehead and winked.  “But you can’t tell him that, ok?  He wouldn’t understand, even if you tried.  He has to find out for himself, if he can.”

She thought of his words outside earlier in the day; _Afraid?  Yes, I’m afraid… But not of you._   Before Bulma could respond though, the air became very heavy.  The weight of it crashed down on her like a great slab of rock, and she felt the need for a deep breath.  Goku’s eyes shifted, and his hand sat idle on Gohan’s head.  The boy continued to sleep, until he stirred again and took a few short breaths.  Bulma lifted a hand to her arm and felt the gooseflesh there.

“Son-kun?”

“Listen, Bulma, he knows I’m still here; I can feel how unhappy it makes him.  Don’t worry; we’ll be gone before you know it!”

Her friend stood quickly and gathered his sleeping son in his arms.  Bulma followed as he made for the entrance of the sunroom and put two fingers on the side of his head, then closed his eyes to concentrate.  She reached out for his shoulder, knowing he wouldn’t transmit with her.

“You don’t have to leave because of him, Son-kun.”

Her friend glanced down at her, and the smile that had mystified her all evening poured over her like a waterfall of sunshine in the dim room.  Goku blinked, watching her the way a child may watch an adult: with blatant, unadulterated curiosity.

“It’s not for him, Bulma,” Goku said.  “Remember not to tell him, alright?”

Her hand slid from the soft shoulder of his gi, and from here she could hear the gentle chirp of the night crickets.  She nodded to him, eager, so desperate to tell him the truth but unwilling to imagine his disapproval, even though she knew he would never give such a thing.  He was incapable.

Before he went though, Goku reached out and touched her long, straight hair with his fingers and smiled warmly.

“See you soon big sis,” he said.  He touched his forehead again, and in an instant he was gone.

 

#

 

When he touched the control panel on the GSR, disengaging the program and ending the gravity simulation, Vegeta’s knees nearly buckled at the release that flowed through his limbs.  For just a moment, in the soundless void of this room, he leaned both arms against the control panel and groaned out the protest of his limbs as they readjusted to Earth’s paltry gravity.  Gods, his fingertips shook with the pleasure of it.

Vegeta read the clock at the top right corner of the control panel.  Three hours after midnight; late by Earth standards, and yet the most perfect time of night.  At this hour, when the sky was darkest, he could see the stars.  Tonight, though… Tonight something drew his mind away from the black, glorious repose of space.  It was as maddening as it was curious; as exciting as it was terrifying.  Vegeta’s encounter with the Blue-Haired Minx earlier in the day had weighed on his mind with infuriating persistence.

Routine spar bot drills had been a chore, to say the least, and even simple strength training had left his mind open to the more efficient ways he might next pin her to the wall—or the bed, or the kitchen table, for fuck’s sake.  Anywhere, so long as she was screaming and squealing in delight just as she had a few nights ago.  But the more he thought about it, the more it aggravated his sensibilities; _her squealing had no place in his main priority, the gods damn her!_   Vegeta slapped a palm heavily against the control panel, though not so strongly as to break it, and turned with a huff to head out the exit of the GSR.  As the door hissed open, he mourned the utterly foolish decision he’d made by replacing the door on his own, especially after her particularly petulant request that he do so.  In the end, though, it was either that or forego more training just to get her ludicrously attractive bitch-mode up and running again.  Neither outcome seemed more appealing at the time; both would have done, but he had androids to destroy, didn’t he?  He had something to prove to that low-class, moronic son of a bitch, Kakarot, _didn’t he?_

Outside the air was still heavy and humid, albeit a tad chilly, but Kakarot’s ki signature had left the immediate area over five hours ago.  _That_ distraction had merely portended the others that followed; what the fuck had he been doing there, cooped up in Bulma’s west compound for so many hours and toting that half-breed brat with him?  Vegeta let out a short puff of hot breath and gazed heavenward.

The night insects of Earth chattered all around him, so numerous that they nearly drowned out his thoughts entirely.  This was a rare ability, indeed.  But as he blinked, staring up into the dark sky and lifting his lip in a defiant sneer, he noted that the night was cloudy.  Somewhere close by, a cat mewled.  Blasted, furry things.  Blasted clouds, blocking out his view.  That _blasted, big-headed, gorgeous wench,_ blocking out all other thoughts but one.

Vegeta stalked through the dewy grass, silencing the insects as he rushed by.  At his speed, the east compound grew by inches until he was upon it, and as though he had known it would be all along he spotted the kitchen light glowing on the edge of the eastern most dome structure.  Unwittingly, his lips curled into a smirk.  She was awake, of course she was, and the moment she saw him she would erupt into a flurry of staggering harassment that would probably ignite this troublesome obsession of his into outright arousal.

Somehow, from somewhere in the depths of hell, Vegeta couldn’t help but think Frieza was still tormenting him; Holy Blood Goddess, he was torturing him with _Bulma Briefs_.  That slimy, lizard bastard was probably enjoying it, too, the way he had enjoyed mind-fucking the Saiyan Prince for twenty-five odd years until he’d pierced his heart with a simple flick of his finger.  Vegeta blinked away the memory of the slow, creeping darkness of imminent death that had followed, and the unbearable pain of his denied revenge as he’d slipped away, cursing that red-eyed son of a whore the whole way down to the River of Blood.

He shook his head and growled.  The sound was muted by the humid air, and it washed away on the wind as he made his way inside the lab wing, intent on his final destination.  Two days away from Capsule Corp and in the mountains outside West City had given him ample time to consider his options once he returned; he _had_ to return, given his current situation and the lack of any other sufficient training equipment, but then what?  At some juncture during that time away, Vegeta knew that he could not attain the things he needed without encountering _her_ again.  But he had not expected the conversation outside the GSR today.  No, he had not expected that at all…

Vegeta punched in the access code to the lab wing and stormed inside.  Though his ki was significantly suppressed, he still felt the telltale signs of it swishing around his ankles and curling up around his thighs until it reached his arms, his wrists and hands; it tingled and gave life to his bare skin.  He squeezed his fingers shut and strode down the long hallway toward the residential wing, where the kitchen was the main entryway.  With precise, controlled movements he engaged the door panel and steeled himself for the sight of her: the sight of that maddening, insufferable sexuality that oozed out of her pores like glistening, gorgeous moonlight.

As the door panels slid open though, and Vegeta was met with the sight of a dimly-lit, empty kitchen, his brow furrowed ever deeper.  Why wasn’t she here?  Why wasn’t she poised at the end of that ridiculously situated counter top in the middle of the room with an evil little fucking grin on her face and some sort of snide comment?  In fact, the only evidence that she had been in the kitchen at all was a laptop at the end of the counter, plugged in but sleeping, and a cold mug of that brownish bitter substance she referred to as ‘coffee’.  Her scent lingered in the air of the kitchen, but by the saturation in the air Vegeta could sense she had been gone for at least ninety Earth minutes.

And by the bloody gods, was he furious now.  She would not have the last say, after all the brazen, cocky insults she’d thrown at him earlier—no, _damn her_.  He would be the one to speak now, and by the end of it if she did have anything to say it would be his name on the edges of a howling pleasure.  But how had he missed her location in the compound?  He’d been so hell bent on the kitchen, their usual place of disturbed business, but had obviously missed cues as to her whereabouts.  Vegeta glanced around the empty kitchen once more, and noted with some amusement that a bit of fiber-filling paste had been sanded down into the dent he’d left in the wall near her pretty head three nights ago, but not yet painted.  Then his lip turned up, and he headed through the kitchen into the main residential wing.

The sitting room was empty, but her scent was a bit stronger here.  The Earth Woman had been here more recently than the kitchen.  Vegeta lifted his nose just slightly and turned to the right, toward the room where the giant, flat box was—apparently used for entertainment rather than as a communications device; it seemed quite a useless and conspicuously extravagant means to attain such a thing.

Yes, her scent was quite strong in here, and a string of her pathetic ki signature actually lingered near the couch.  Vegeta let his eyes slide closed, and after just a few seconds of deep concentration, he could hear the running water above the noise of the night insects outside the compound.  He squeezed his fingers into fists again, because there was only one other person inside Capsule Corp who would be running water so late at night apart from him.  Oh, _good._  

“Very good,” Vegeta said aloud, quite surprisingly calm.  The Briefs daughter would know now how deeply her words had affected him, and she would know that it had not necessarily been her most prudent choice.  If she did not realize what she was dealing with by the end of tonight, then by all the gods he would resign himself to accepting her hatred and possibly another catastrophic confrontation with Kakarot, as he had early that morning before he’d left her in the very bedroom he now approached.

In a few short moments he had reached the double sliding doors of her suite and the heavy scent of her, mixed with something clean and slightly sweeter than native fruits, accosted his heightened awareness like a fierce blow to the face.  Vegeta glanced at her door panel, noted that it was locked, and without any more hesitation or indecision, thrust his bare fist into it until the touch panel cracked and the small circuit board pealed out a soft warning.  Just as he had the day his rib had come poking out the side of his torso, Vegeta pressed four fingers into the juncture of the two doors and _pulled_.  With little effort this time they slid open to reveal the object of his violent fixation.

 Blessed Vash’halla, King of the Heavens and War God of countless Saiyan generations, she was a striking vision of fury.  She stood in the middle of the room, twenty feet from the entrance to her bathroom and garbed only in a thin blue robe that hugged her body the way his fingers had gripped it in mindless lust.  Her hair, suddenly straight now and hanging down past her shoulders like a poisonous waterfall, brushed over her skin just as the last bit of his small ki storm died down and whisked out her open balcony doors.  Bulma put both fists on her hips, and to his ears her heavy breathing was not drowned out by the sound of her running shower.

“What in the fucking hell,” she raged quietly, “do you think you’re doing, Vegeta?”

The sound of his name sent shocks of desire coursing through his legs and right up into his cock.  He grinned like a madman and inhaled deeply before gathering his ki and letting it wrap around the flat panels of the malfunctioning doors.  With a growl he pushed forward so that both doors collided with each other in a cloud of electric finality.  To his utter delight, she puffed her chest out.  Her nostrils flared and her jaw tightened with unequivocal ire.

“I _said_ ,” she continued, and stepped toward him with a barely concealed uncertainty.  This time…  Yes, _this_ time she was a bit frightened.  “What do you think you’re doing?”

Vegeta noted that her body was now less than a foot away.  Without pretense, he reached out for the lapel of her robe and dragged her forward with more force than he’d realized.  She lost her footing, squealed ferociously, and tumbled against his chest.  When she finally gazed up at him and attempted to regain her ground, he tightened his grip on her robe.  It was silky, soft and unbearably in his way.

“I’m here to show you a few things,” he told her.  Her wide blue eyes became glazed with equal parts wrath and uncertainty.  She had pushed herself steadily onto her feet and now nearly met his gaze at a straight line.

“You can’t just barge the hell in here, destroying more of my brilliantly designed house, and expect me to be _compliant_ you psychotic, self-important _fuck!_ ”

“Ah,” Vegeta said, with some measure of mirth.  “So you do understand me a bit now, do you?”

Bulma growled oh, _so_ beautifully and reached up to push on his shoulders with both fists.  But she wasn’t really trying, now was she?  Vegeta swung her around so that her back was pressed against the malfunctioned doors, and he pushed his fingers through her soft, straight hair.  The feel of it made it difficult to hold his concentration, but he pressed his forehead against hers.  Her struggle ceased, but she gazed into his glare with unwavering indignation.

“Bulma,” he said, and waited for her eyes to soften as he addressed her by name.  He sneered through bared teeth.  “Bulma, the poor choice you made; I want you to make it again.”

The Earth Woman’s lips parted slowly until they made a rounded ‘o’ of surprise and confusion.

“ _What?_ ”  Her voice was a sweet mixture of irritation, desire and suspicion.

 She leaned back from his head and pressed her head against the wall.  Her breath hitched in her throat as she inhaled deeply, and then halted.  Bulma held her breath, mouth open in invitation.  Well, by the War God’s balls, who was he to deny that?

Vegeta crushed his mouth against hers, digging his tongue so deep inside her open lips that he could taste the surprise in her sigh.  Her body slouched against the wall as her lips closed around his, but her blindingly sexy resilience kicked in and she braced both hands behind her against the door panels to push up and away from them.  He backed up willingly as she pushed against him and caught both sides of his face in as ferocious a grip as she was capable of.  Her fingers dug into the hair on the back of his neck and urged his mouth to open further so that her tongue could meet his in its furious assault.  It was nothing like the kiss that first night in the kitchen—it was hungry and angry.  Vegeta tore his mouth from hers and gripped her face in response, breathed against her lips.

“That’s right, Earth Woman; don’t pretend you want it some other way,” he told her, and tunneled his fingers through the soft waterfall of her hair.  Great gods, it felt like the fabric on the inside of his mother’s cape…  He ground his teeth together and leaned into her, but she surprised him by tugging backward on his hair.

“How the hell would you know _how I_ want it?” she growled.  “You rammed your way in and couldn’t stop until you’d had enough you poor, starving bastard!”

Vegeta tugged back on her hair, rage seeping out of his fingertips like hot lava.  Bulma cried out once, her voice low and ragged with irritation.  Her throat convulsed as she swallowed, and he could see and smell her pulse beating wildly against the ludicrously fragile skin there.  The sight made his erection throb with anticipation.

“I’m not a bastard,” he replied coolly, on the edge of a laugh, “but I am a prick, and I _am_ starving, Bulma.  Like you didn’t know.  You act as though you hadn’t guessed that even before I ‘rammed’ my way in.”

“So you’re a master of idioms now, are you?” she croaked out.  Vegeta tugged harder and leaned forward to sniff right at her pulse, where he could smell her blood so easily that it sent a thrill of lust up his spine.  The finality of his conclusions came crashing down on him like the hot water running in the bathroom just feet away.

“You knew what I was then, in the kitchen that night when this began” he said, “you’ve always known, and you know now.  So, _why_?”

The sound of the water running in the bathroom, the music of her breathing, the thunder of blood rushing through her veins, it was all too much.  She shifted in his grip, and one hand reached down between them.  Vegeta held his breath and let his lips hover so closely to her neck that the pounding of her heart raised the skin to his mouth.  She wasn’t just afraid this time; she was so angry that it made his blood sing.  Her hand slid over the bulge in his shorts, fingers curling under until she was cupping his balls with maddening tenderness.  His fingers loosened in her hair of their own volition, and Bulma’s chin dipped down until her nose touched his.  She was grinning like a fucking child.

“’Why not?’” she replied, mimicking him with uncanny precision.

With that, Vegeta roared and reached down to lift her off of her feet and sling her barely clad body over his shoulder.  Bulma shrieked, obviously uncaring as to who would hear her, or _if_ anyone would hear her.  In just a few strides, Vegeta tossed her into a heap on the bed and watched as her flimsy robe slid down one pale shoulder and over the top of her naked breast.  Good gods it _had_ to be torment, for such a defiant and unruly, _inferior_ sort of creature to make his blood boil with fury and burn with lust at the same time.

Bulma glared up at him, her breath heaving, and attempted to re-adjust her robe.  He reached out to stop her hand and grip her chin.  She was shaking now, with real rage.  Good.  _Good…_   The hand that gripped her chin slid back into her hair and cupped the back of her head.  Vegeta took a deep breath and watched as her hands gripped both of his wrists with no more resistance than a lap dog may give a generous belly rub.  Fuck if he could not help the low chuckle that escaped his chest.

“Then you take me as I am, Earth Woman,” he told her, quietly and purposefully.  “You know what I am, and you take me just as I am.  You’re a blasted fool.”

Bulma squeezed his wrists and pushed herself up to her knees.  They were nearly eye to eye again, and Vegeta’s eyes narrowed at the rush of visceral heat that climbed up his core.  He pushed the robe completely off of her shoulder, and forced her arm down at her side.  She took a breath and brushed her lips against his.

“Maybe,” she whispered, and the contact sent electric shocks through him.  “Maybe I am a fool, but no more a fool than you, Vegeta.” 

This time he chuckled more boldly and cupped her face again with both hands.

“You are right about that,” he said, and kissed her once, hard and deep.  “I am a fool, for letting you set this complete and utter shit storm up to begin with: for letting you touch me at all.”

She struggled momentarily, that gorgeous look of indignation hot against her ice-blue eyes, but Vegeta slid his hand under her thin robe and cupped her breast with real purpose.  Her skin was cool against his fiery touch, and he pinched the already pert nipple between two fingers.  His cock jumped against his leg at the little gasp of delight she allowed herself, because it was dashed with a lovely bit of angst and rebellion.

Sweet gods he had to see her naked again.  Vegeta shoved both of his palms against her shoulders until she squeaked and fell backward onto the bed.  Her robe swished open to reveal both lovely breasts, and they bounced back as she hit the sheets with a soft, sweet little growl.  Before she could right herself again though, Vegeta knelt forward on the bed and pinned her resolutely.  Bulma’s eyes met his in the dim light of the room, and her gazed bored into him like the lightning strikes of ki dancing between them earlier that day.  Her lips opened and one curled into a sneer.

“You like when I touch you, ‘Prince Vegeta’; don’t pretend.”

He laughed and pressed his forehead into hers with an insistence that dizzied even the Saiyan Prince himself.  He breathed hard against her mouth and pressed one thumb against her bottom lip.

“I never pretended anything of the sort,” he replied with a haughty grunt.  Vegeta released one of her shoulders to push the robe out of his way and brush a palm over her bare breast, all the way to where her hips flared out and the dip in her waist met her thighs.  Her eyes never left his, and she squinted at him with barely masked confusion.

“But I’m going to touch _you_ now, Earth Woman,” he told her, and slid his hand between her legs.  Oh, bloody hell she was already wet as he slid just one finger in, then two when she arched her back and gripped his arm with a strength he had not thought her capable of.  Her hips bent toward him like the taught string of a bow.  If he was going to indulge this obsession well, he may as well do it right.

“You want me to ‘understand’ you, Bulma?” he hissed at her as her breath came in short hiccups.  His fingers worked their way deeper inside, and out again as he curled his thumb around to stroke the skin that stretched around his fingers.  She seemed to like that very much more than just his simple ministrations, and she gasped loudly against his mouth.  Vegeta chuckled.

“You like that, do you?”  She nodded, slowly with wide, fascinated eyes that begged a question and demanded an answer.  With neither to give, Vegeta pushed up on his other elbow to gaze down at her with a veiled interest.  “What else do you like, hmm?  What are you built for, Earth Woman?”

Dear gods what he wouldn’t give to eat her up and make her disappear--!  The look on her face though, it was now and had been enough to stave off his wiser instinct: the one that made him want to dispose of any weakness.  To destroy any person, thing or idea that made him vulnerable…

Vegeta nudged her forehead back until she was flat against the bed again, legs wide open, his fingers still buried deep within her.  His brow furrowed at the sharp intake of her breath when his thumb brushed the smaller nub of flesh above his fingers.

“Oh?”  His voice betrayed the curiosity he didn’t want her to hear, but he pressed his thumb down on the new piece of her he had not discovered before, and the reaction was glorious.  “What’s this then?” he asked, her voice rising above his with ardor.

Vegeta shifted, slid both fingers out of her until he could smell her ridiculously potent arousal, and drew circles around the curious bit of flesh.  The gorgeous Earthling beneath him writhed against his hand and reached down to grip his wrist.  It seemed almost a reflex, a plea.  He remembered her uninhibited shriek in the kitchen and bent his neck so he could reach the peak of one lovely breast and draw his tongue against it roughly.  She shook under him and slammed her own head against the bed as he continued to draw patterns around her flesh with his finger.

“Ve-Vegeta,” she managed, and dug her hands into his hair.  This time the tips of her fingers made contact with his skin and a wracking shiver made its way up his spine.  He snarled and bit down hard on her nipple.

“Vegeta _please!_ ”

Her voice was just where he wanted it; yes, just where he had wanted it when he’d come looking for her a mere half of an hour ago.  His name on the edges of howling pleasure…

He chuckled against her skin.

“Please what, Earth Woman?  What is this I have here?”  He leaned back, glancing down between her legs.  “What is it you want so much?”  She did not answer at first, but her glare was so furious that it might have melted a lesser creature’s resolve.  She took a few heaving breaths and bucked her hips against his hand.

“Come now, _Bulma_ ,” he murmured, quite nicely he thought.  “You’re the only Earthling I’ve ever touched, you know?  You’re going to have to be more specific.”

Her brow lifted, and there was a realization there he could not read.  Vegeta felt a fledgling fury begin to curl in his gut at the look she gave him, as though she finally knew something about him.  She knew nothing.  All the gods, if she could see the way he had treated females before her…  _She knew nothing!_   He growled and lifted his hand from between her legs to press two fingers against her open lips.  Her eyes changed and became hooded under the insistence of his gaze.

“You’d better tell me now, little thing, before I ram back in and let myself forget all over again.”

“Vegeta…” she whispered against his fingers.  The air was suddenly very heavy with her breath, with the sound of the running water in the bathroom, and the weight of his rock hard cock poking at her thigh.  “Vegeta,” she said again, “put your mouth on me and taste me, for the love of _Kami_.”

Briefly Vegeta felt an unfamiliar rush of uncertainty, and it coupled with his deep-seated yearning to really, _really_ taste her and know what she was made of before he destroyed her.  But he smirked handsomely and made sure she saw it.  If this gods-damned, torturous beauty wanted him to taste her then by all the demons of hell, he would.

He slid off the edge of the bed so that he rested on one knee between her parted legs.  One sniff into the air told him exactly how _badly_ she wanted this, and he leaned forward to lap his tongue all the way up the folds of her flesh until he hit that intriguing little bit of it that made her so fucking mad for him.  She jerked and moaned, dug her fingers back into his hair and _pulled_ until the sensation made him just as mad.

She was sweet, and musky and everything in between, and the more he lapped at her like one possessed the more the candor of her voice changed into something unrecognizable.  Gods, what was it?  But the longer he tasted what she had begged him for, the more his curiosity began to crumble, and when he flicked his tongue over this apparently over-sensitive piece of her that seemed so sadly neglected, her body went rigid.  She cried out on a sob, and her long, pale legs squeezed around his shoulders as though something would save her from the torrent of release rushing through her.  Her skin was hot now, like a warm blanket.

Vegeta drew his hands up again and ran both thumbs along the outer edges of the searing hot flesh between her legs.  She shuddered and tugged again on his hair.  Now it was too much to bear.  His curiosity was gone as her slick desire trickled over his thumbs and her voice calmed above him.  _No._   She was not done screaming yet.

Vegeta stood and hooked one arm under her waist on his way, so that she lifted easily from the sheets.  Her soft sighs turned into a questioning hum until he tossed her face first further onto the bed, close to the other side that touched the wall.  For a moment, her body glowed a soft gold in the light from the bathroom, and it was _all he wanted in this whole dark, dank, shit hole of a universe…_

He reached out with both hands to grip her hips and raise them off the bed until her bottom pressed against his hips and her elbows dug into the mattress. 

“Vegeta?” her voice came clearly, with a question, but instead of answering he buried himself inside her with a practiced ease and control.  She cried out again, husky and low, which only served to urge him on.  He pounded into her just as he had before, because she was right, Vash’halla curse her soul.  She was right.

He reached down to lift her upper body off of the bed, and she instinctively slapped a palm against the wall.  Vegeta grasped and squeezed a breast with vicious fervor and picked up his merciless pace until he was grunting against her back.  He lifted his head to press his cheek near her ear.

“You see, Earthling?  You see, Bulma?  I’m still fucking starving…!” 

To his delight, she tightened around him and her voice again began to gain momentum.  His grip on her hips intensified, and she squeaked a bit in pain.  He was unprepared for the sound of her words.

“Then take what you want, dammit,” she gasped.  “Just take it and know what it is!  Sweet, merciful K-Kami, I _want_ you, Vegeta!”

“NO!”  He roared, rode her harder and gripped her neck just so she would stop moving.  “You don’t understand--!  _Fuck!_ ”  He cursed his war god Vash’halla again, the one who had abandoned him: the one who had abandoned his people.  “I will _always_ be starving!”

She came over him like firelight over a vast plain of destroyed earth on a distant planet he had once annihilated.  Her voice echoed in the room until it was the only sound he could hear mingling with his own.  He cried out against her shoulder and dug his fingers so deeply into her skin that he could nearly feel the bruises come out.  He was coming inside her and the world was splitting apart, edge upon edge upon edge.  He sighed into the crook of her neck, and when he could feel his voice coming back to him, he told her again.

“Bulma, I will always be starving.”

 


End file.
